Are core dumps per se, really bad? I think, that the feature is useful. What is bad is frequency of it happening. For example: are Python's tracebacks better? Maybe I had a bad luck, but in my experience they happen with similar frequency. Core dumps allow you to go to debugger and see what has happened. You can easily send the file. If the crashed software goes without source you can't do a thing, but that's what was the intention. With obfuscated Python one would also be left with nothing.