Why Modern Programming Languages Are Becoming Unsafe Again: The Hidden Costs of Abstraction in Rust, Go, Python, and JavaScript
Modern software development went through several cycles of escaping complexity only to recreate it in a different form. In the early days, low level languages like C gave developers full control over memory, layout, and performance, but this freedom came with high risk. Memory corruption, data races, buffer overflows, and undefined behavior were common. Later, languages like Java and C# pushed developers toward safer abstractions. Then Python and JavaScript made the runtime even more forgiving. Today, Rust and Go promise a return to predictability with strict memory models, type safety, and clear concurrency rules. Yet something interesting is happening beneath the surface. Even in languages designed for safety and simplicity, new forms of unpredictability, performance traps, and abstraction-driven risks have emerged. This does not mean these languages are unsafe in the traditional sense, but the hidden costs of modern abstractions create behaviors that developers cannot always r...