What performance penalty would you tolerate to have a "safe" computing environment?

[Urban Ranger]

I meant the programmer should deal with buffer overruns, not the compiler or the OS. Though some built-in safe guards are definitely welcome.

[loinburger]

It's unrealistic to expect (more or less) error-free programming without the assistance of an automated or semi-automated analysis tool, whether it's the compiler or some kind of souce-to-source translator like ccured. About the only way to guarantee safety without compromising on performance (at least until region inference algorithms get a helluva lot better) is with a dependent type system or something similarly hideous.

[:) Smiley]

For my computer, 1.1

For computers that I have to perform tech support on, 3.

[Az]

If I had a faster computer, I'd take a much bigger hit, like 3, or something - since I'd have spare performance. but on my current one, it's impossible.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by loinburger
It's unrealistic to expect (more or less) error-free programming without the assistance of an automated or semi-automated analysis tool, whether it's the compiler or some kind of souce-to-source translator like ccured. About the only way to guarantee safety without compromising on performance (at least until region inference algorithms get a helluva lot better) is with a dependent type system or something similarly hideous.

Well, if you are careful with the inputs, you stop most of the problems cold on the spot.

I reckon either the compiler or the OS is needed for some things, such as clearing out a block of the heap before allocating it to a new process.