On 18 Mar 2015 12:59 pm, "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne@gmail.com> wrote:

> Instead, I'll step back to Thompson's paper...
>
> "The moral is obvious. You can't trust code that you did not totally
> create yourself."

This whole conversation/hissy-fit is missing yet another problem.  Even Ken Thompson wrote code with bugs and constructed code vulnerable to exploitation. I certainly don't blindly trust the code I write - I make the confident assumption that it is buggy and possibly dangerous. If anyone on Earth wrote a program that actually addressed my needs I wouldn't be writing the code at all.

Trusting something so complicated it requires a computer to interpret and run it is a challenge. Many approaches are being explored, differences of opinion are being generated constantly.  That's OK.

There are a lot of things that are now standard that are based on history rather than good theoretical bases.

Let's look at working solutions, ask questions and try to be friendly and a little more understanding.

There is no right way, and priorities differ.