Quote from: gmaxwell on December 24, 2014, 08:23:37 PM

Quote from: Peter Todd on December 24, 2014, 07:37:19 AM

I'm mainly concerned about whether or not using C(++) with manual memory management is acceptable practice. Screwing up manual memory management exposes you to the king of all implicit details: what garbage happens to be in memory at that very moment.

We mostly do not use manual memory management in Bitcoin core. Virtually all use of delete is in explicit destructors, most things are just RAII. I looked a while back and think found only something like three or four instances of use delete outside of destructors, and I assume those cases will all be changed the next time they're touched (e.g. examples include the wallet encryption, which hasn't been touched in years).

(I thought it was really weird of Mike brought up manual memory management, I see I made an error in not correcting him.

Huh? I quite clearly give Bitcoin Core as an example of C++ done right, precisely because it uses a safe subset of the language that is a higher-level language via the abstractions used. You brought up C, which just isn't a safe language to write code in.

I read Mike's post as pointing out that knowing how to use C++ correctly - what subset to use - is something that does take skill. It's notable that we've changed a few things in Bitcoin Core to, for instance, use pointers where we didn't before, gradually decreasing the safety of the system by using parts of the language beyond that safe subset.