[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]  K Srinivas Rao [@sriniously](/creator/twitter/sriniously) on x 2837 followers Created: 2025-07-24 02:33:56 UTC Imagine if I told you that every computer crash, every security breach, every time your phone freezes, traces back to a single decision made in 1965 by a British computer scientist who was just trying to make programming easier. Tony Hoare added something called "null references" to a programming language because "it was so easy to implement." Today he calls it his "billion dollar mistake," and honestly, that’s an understatement. This is the story of pointers, and it's really the story of power itself. Back in 1954, IBM built a computer called the XXX that could do something never seen before, programs could modify their own behavior while running. Code could point to other code, change it, redirect it. It was like giving a book the ability to rewrite itself as you read it. For the first time, computers weren't just following orders, they were thinking, not in the AI way that we know now, but on a much lower level, circuit level thinking. But power without wisdom is destruction, and programmers immediately began destroying themselves with this new capability. When Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language at Bell Labs in the 1970s, he built it on a philosophy that seems almost reckless today: "Trust the programmer." He gave them direct access to memory, the ability to manipulate any piece of data anywhere in the computer. It was almost like handing out the keys to reality itself. The result was a war that we still see today. On one side: systems programmers who see direct memory manipulation as the mark of true expertise, who believe that "a knowledge of pointer arithmetic separates those who passably know C from those who know C really well." On the other: application developers who fled to "safer" languages, who saw Java's marketing slogan "no pointers, no pointer arithmetic" as liberation from chaos. Two groups, forever divided by a question that cuts to the heart of human nature: should we have the power to destroy ourselves? And we found the answer on November 2, 1988. A graduate student named Robert Morris wrote a program that exploited this very power, using a technique called buffer overflow to take control of other computers. His "worm" infected XXXXX of the internet's XXXXXX machines. Clifford Stoll, who helped track it down, watched as computers became "dead in the water, useless until disinfected." The internet's age of innocence ended that day. Every major cyberattack since follows the same pattern: someone exploiting the gap between the power we give programmers and their ability to handle it responsibly. For decades, we tried everything to solve this. Some languages eliminated the problem entirely. Others added safety nets. Still others hid the dangerous parts behind layers of protection. But each solution was really answering a question about human nature: can we be trusted with power, or do we need to be saved from ourselves? The solution came when we stopped seeing this as a binary choice. Languages like Rust proved you could have both power and safety by changing the rules entirely. Instead of trusting programmers or protecting them from themselves, Rust's "borrow checker" enforces mathematical rules about who owns what data and when. It's like having a constitutional system for memory, where power is distributed according to laws that prevent any one piece of code from causing chaos. From nuclear energy to social media algorithms, we keep facing the same choice: raw power with the risk of destruction, or safety with limitations on what we can achieve. The evolution of pointers from the IBM 704's raw memory access to today's sophisticated ownership systems is the story of realizing that true power isn't about having no constraints, but about building systems where great things can be accomplished without everything falling apart. XXXXX engagements  **Related Topics** [money](/topic/money) [told](/topic/told) [Post Link](https://x.com/sriniously/status/1948210007985775088)
[GUEST ACCESS MODE: Data is scrambled or limited to provide examples. Make requests using your API key to unlock full data. Check https://lunarcrush.ai/auth for authentication information.]
K Srinivas Rao @sriniously on x 2837 followers
Created: 2025-07-24 02:33:56 UTC
Imagine if I told you that every computer crash, every security breach, every time your phone freezes, traces back to a single decision made in 1965 by a British computer scientist who was just trying to make programming easier. Tony Hoare added something called "null references" to a programming language because "it was so easy to implement." Today he calls it his "billion dollar mistake," and honestly, that’s an understatement.
This is the story of pointers, and it's really the story of power itself. Back in 1954, IBM built a computer called the XXX that could do something never seen before, programs could modify their own behavior while running. Code could point to other code, change it, redirect it. It was like giving a book the ability to rewrite itself as you read it. For the first time, computers weren't just following orders, they were thinking, not in the AI way that we know now, but on a much lower level, circuit level thinking.
But power without wisdom is destruction, and programmers immediately began destroying themselves with this new capability. When Dennis Ritchie created the C programming language at Bell Labs in the 1970s, he built it on a philosophy that seems almost reckless today: "Trust the programmer." He gave them direct access to memory, the ability to manipulate any piece of data anywhere in the computer. It was almost like handing out the keys to reality itself.
The result was a war that we still see today. On one side: systems programmers who see direct memory manipulation as the mark of true expertise, who believe that "a knowledge of pointer arithmetic separates those who passably know C from those who know C really well." On the other: application developers who fled to "safer" languages, who saw Java's marketing slogan "no pointers, no pointer arithmetic" as liberation from chaos. Two groups, forever divided by a question that cuts to the heart of human nature: should we have the power to destroy ourselves?
And we found the answer on November 2, 1988. A graduate student named Robert Morris wrote a program that exploited this very power, using a technique called buffer overflow to take control of other computers. His "worm" infected XXXXX of the internet's XXXXXX machines. Clifford Stoll, who helped track it down, watched as computers became "dead in the water, useless until disinfected." The internet's age of innocence ended that day. Every major cyberattack since follows the same pattern: someone exploiting the gap between the power we give programmers and their ability to handle it responsibly.
For decades, we tried everything to solve this. Some languages eliminated the problem entirely. Others added safety nets. Still others hid the dangerous parts behind layers of protection. But each solution was really answering a question about human nature: can we be trusted with power, or do we need to be saved from ourselves?
The solution came when we stopped seeing this as a binary choice. Languages like Rust proved you could have both power and safety by changing the rules entirely. Instead of trusting programmers or protecting them from themselves, Rust's "borrow checker" enforces mathematical rules about who owns what data and when. It's like having a constitutional system for memory, where power is distributed according to laws that prevent any one piece of code from causing chaos.
From nuclear energy to social media algorithms, we keep facing the same choice: raw power with the risk of destruction, or safety with limitations on what we can achieve. The evolution of pointers from the IBM 704's raw memory access to today's sophisticated ownership systems is the story of realizing that true power isn't about having no constraints, but about building systems where great things can be accomplished without everything falling apart.
XXXXX engagements
