Better language or checking tool?
- by rwallace
This is primarily aimed at programmers who use unmanaged languages like C and C++ in preference to managed languages, forgoing some forms of error checking to obtain benefits like the ability to work in extremely resource constrained systems or the last increment of performance, though I would also be interested in answers from those who use managed languages.
Which of the following would be of most value?
A language that would optionally compile to CLR byte code or to machine code via C, and would provide things like optional array bounds checking, more support for memory management in environments where you can't use garbage collection, and faster compile times than typical C++ projects. (Think e.g. Ada or Eiffel with Python syntax.)
A tool that would take existing C code and perform static analysis to look for things like potential null pointer dereferences and array overflows. (Think e.g. an open source equivalent to Coverity.)
Something else I haven't thought of.
Or put another way, when you're using C family languages, is the top of your wish list more expressiveness, better error checking or something else?
The reason I'm asking is that I have a design and prototype parser for #1, and an outline design for #2, and I'm wondering which would be the better use of resources to work on after my current project is up and running; but I think the answers may be useful for other tools programmers also.
(As usual with questions of this nature, if the answer you would give is already there, please upvote it.)
