TID: Mystic BBS 1.12 A46   
   MSGID: 3:770/100 07736998   
   REPLY: 2:280/464 5ea07abe   
   TZUTC: 1200   
   On 22 Apr 2020 at 07:10p, Wilfred van Velzen pondered and said...   
       
    Wv> On 2020-04-22 12:54:00, you wrote to me:   
    Wv>  DC> Sure. Which part of it?   
    Wv>    
    Wv> Why you don't trust binkd.   
      
   Ah.  It's a lot of code, it's exquisitely complex,   
   and it's written in a weakly-typed, unsafe language.   
      
   The first time I tried to run it, I ran into a   
   memory corruption issue that had lain dormant for   
   two decades.  Another memory-out-of-bounds bug   
   showed up when it was compiled with IPv6 support.   
   A filesystem permissions problem caused an   
   infinite loop with no diagnostic.  On my system,   
   it mysteriously crashes *inside the Perl   
   interpreter* when parsing nodelists; I  some   
   sort of memory corruption issue in binkd that   
   manifests itself inside the Perl shared object.   
      
   Finally, I'm not at all sure how resilient it   
   is to avoiding data corruption in the event of   
   failure (either binkd or the system).   
      
   At that point, I realized I was faced with a   
   decision: do I double down on binkd and attempt   
   to fix it, or do I write my own replacement?   
      
   The former involves ensuring compatibility with   
   all sorts of legacy environments that I'm neither   
   equipped nor interested in supporting (OS/2 and   
   Win9x with ancient compilers, for example: even   
   if I wanted to support those -- and let me be   
   clear, I do not -- I don't have a development   
   environment for them and while I could set one   
   up, I'm just not interested) and that require   
   workarounds for lacking features available in   
   modern standards.  The whole suite has very   
   little in the way of unit-level tests, let alone   
   integration style tests.   
      
   And how much effort do I really want to put into   
   it, anyway?   
      
   The other option means I can make a clean break   
   from the past, write in a type- and memory-safe   
   language (I chose Go), write as many tests as I   
   like, and take advantage of built-in support for   
   modern testing practices etc.  Further, I'm   
   beholden to no one but myself to maintain   
   compatibility.  Since this is all just for fun   
   anyway, I chose that route.   
      
   --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/04/20 (Windows/32)   
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (3:770/100)   
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