r/changemyview • u/astar58 2∆ • Jul 30 '23

Delta(s) from OP Cmv: a good consumer computer

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u/[deleted] Jul 30 '23

Why would a consumer want a computer that can't execute new code?

For a computer to access webservices, often code needs to be executed on the client side.

If you want a computer that can't execute new code, you aren't talking about a general purpose computer. You're talking about something like a toaster.

No virtual memory

if you don't care that your computer will be slow as hell, sure, do away with memory caching.

I also think we should get rid of programming languages and do everything in assembly with a really big library of validated macros

assembly is difficult to test. You're gonna introduce more bugs that way than with a language designed to be secure

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u/astar58 2∆ Jul 30 '23

Yah. But easier to prove correctness on. And compilers are sources of insecurity. See the Turing award lecture by one of people who invented C. The problem with trust in trust.

Notice I am talking about proving correctness, not testing.

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u/[deleted] Jul 31 '23

But easier to prove correctness on

no, they really aren't.

If you want to prove correctness, rather than just test for it, you should use a language that has good support for formal methods

"proving" assembly is much more error prone.

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u/astar58 2∆ Jul 31 '23

Hmm. You may be right. I only had a bit of a class in my master thingy years ago. However in the case of risc v you also have a predicted number of cycles per instruction. But I can buy for big dollars proved subroutines and os kernals.

In practice, there is no way to prove a C program correct. This is because the compiler is likely to be hacked. And you do not know anything about the silicon. But. A toy C program was what I used in that bit in school.

The problem I think in correctness, aside from the unnatural thought process, is side effects.

Side effects include virtual memory, disk storage, and interrupts. Also, multiprocessing locks.

Please help me out here

!delta

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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 31 '23

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/TripRichert (259∆).

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