Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!dimacs.rutgers.edu!seismo!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: namespace (rethought & reiterated)
Message-ID: <70982@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 2 Mar 91 02:46:34 GMT
References: <4e2Gwz9f@cs.psu.edu> <1991Feb6.155227.553@mathcs.sjsu.edu> <592@taumet.com> <1991Feb10.024111.8967@mathcs.sjsu.edu> <615@taumet.com>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 32

In article <615@taumet.com> mike@taumet.UUCP (Michael S. Ball) writes:
|In article <1991Feb10.024111.8967@mathcs.sjsu.edu> horstman@mathcs.sjsu.edu (Cay Horstmann) writes:
|>In article <592@taumet.com> mike@taumet.UUCP (Michael S. Ball) writes:
|>>The ANSI committee doesn't feel that it has a mandate to develop a new
|>>language, but rather to standardize an existing one.  
|>
|>And I think it is unfortunate that the ANSI committee feels that way.
|>Clearly the ANSI C committee did not, and as a result C became a much
|>better language.
|
|But that is the approach taken by the ANSI C committee.  Lack of implementation
|experience was the basic argument against a variety of "nice" extensions.
|
|I do not believe that the two committees differ much in this regard.
|The C++ committee has already stepped beyond existing implementations by
|adding templates and exceptions.  Nonetheless, from all I have seen the
|committee itself (unlike proposals from the field) is taking a very
|conservative approach to language changes.  Personally, I think it is
|fortunate, since our experience with language design by standards committees
|hasn't been good.

I tend to agree, but then the result is that it is up to the compiler
vendors to implement the "fixes" that C++ needs in incompatible ways,
and then at some point in time in the future, a committee has to 
reconvene and try to figure out how to standardize on "C+=2"

I think we have to admit that there's going to areas that the committee
can't get agreement on.  But being totally conservative leaves too
much to be resolve and/or fixed "the next time."  The right approach falls
somewhere between being totally conservative and totally liberal.  Right
now, the approach seems to me to be falling in the "totally conservative"
camp:  "Let's just rubber stamp ARM and get out of here."