I get the feeling that very few old school authors would come forward and say "Hey, my project code is not good and needs to be re-written." Most of the time the message is more like "Sure we're using C but we're very careful and have built in a lot of safeguards."

I like your idea of a default mindset of internet tools should be written in a safe language with proper engineering techniques. I'm not sure I would go as far as malpractice but it might be a good stick to use to force makers into better practices.