lagache@picsou.inria.fr (Edouard Lagache) (06/29/90)
> > >What's needed is > >a committee who are vehemently interested in doing a high-quality job. > > You should start attending the meetings. It is worth noting that the most successful languages were not developed by a committee. For example: BASIC, "C", "C++", Pascal, PROLOG . . . . Even languages like LISP and FORTRAN didn't get their start in committees. We are still waiting for a FORTRAN-88, I don't know if the "C" standard is finally out or not, I do know people were programming in ANSI-C long before the standard, primarily because I suspect so much was borrowed from C++ (which was well defined). I was forced to abandon work partially because it was in this weird language called PROLOG that people didn't know anything about. I don't know what is going on in the PROLOG standard meetings. I do know that 2 years ago when I abandoned PROLOG, people were talking about a standard. How many more people will have to abandon PROLOG before this fabled standard comes to supposedly save the day? Sorry if this a little bitter. That is just the way I feel these days. Edouard Lagache INRIA, Sophia Antipolis - FRANCE (for the summer). P.S. Since these days I find myself trying to hack Motif and C++, this obviously does not represent the views of INRIA or my group.
pgl@cup.portal.com (Peter G Ludemann) (07/05/90)
> We are still waiting for a FORTRAN-88, I don't know if the "C" > standard is finally out or not, I do know people were programming in > ANSI-C long before the standard, primarily because I suspect so much > was borrowed from C++ (which was well defined). I was team leader for one of the first ANSI-C implementations and I can assure you that it was no fun at all writing code while the standard was being finished. On the other hand, doing an implementation does help in finding ambiguities in the standard. :-) Anyway, the ANSI-C standard is final. It only took about 5 years. You'd be surprised at how many holes there are in K&R or Stroustroup when one considers all the different platforms. Clocksin&Mellish is no better (or worse) than Kernighan&Richie. Now that there are more developers on the ISO committee, I'm hoping that we'll see some real progress (if one looks at the ANSI-C committee, almost everyone represented a C compiler developer). - Peter Ludemann (standard disclaimer)