While I agree that Pd should not crash here, I don't agree with your reasoning: Pd is a programming language. It is possible to write buggy programs in Pd just as in [...] Javascript. That's not the fault of Pd or [...] Javascript

(I've stripped out the part about C because that's a compiled language while PD and javascript are interpreted languages and I think they just can't be treated the same way)

I agree with what you say. However, I can't think of any "bugginess" of any pd or javascript program that may justify the interpreter to crash. If a web page with buggy javascript makes my browser to crash and close (with all the other pages I had opened in the other tabs), that IS a bug of the browser or javascript interpreter.

Of course, I cannot expect a buggy patch [javascript program] to "work". *Its execution* may even become unstable (and that of all simultaneously running patches, since the PD "virtual machine" is not and is not supposed nor expected to be a "multitasking" virtual machine where patches are independent programs) but I still MUST be able to save the patch, and close one or all the patch windows. If I can't do that, then PD has a bug. I am not saying that the developers of pd should be scorned for that, nor that it easy to fix, nor even that it is worth wasting time fixing it, but it is a bug.

The interpreter or virtual machine of an interpreted language is a software, and the interpreted code is its input. The "virtual" machine can became "virtually" unstable if it is running buggy code. But the "real" software that simulates the virtual machine must keep stable; if it triggers (legitimate) operating system's defense mechanisms, the interpreter is buggy software.

The case of C is different, because it is a compiled language that produces real machine code which will run (and crash) directly on the real machine. It is the programmer's responsibility to avoid writing code that will crash - though it is the operating system's responsibility to avoid that its crash affects other programs running simultaneously.

Obviously this has no relevance to the original discussion about the namecanvas but I thought it was interesting as a general matter. And I preserved the subject to keep it identifiable as a followup to that thread.