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From: lambert@boring.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: ANSI BASIC
Message-ID: <6364@boring.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Mar-85 15:44:02 EST
Article-I.D.: boring.6364
Posted: Thu Mar 21 15:44:02 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Mar-85 01:38:38 EST
References: <443@vax2.fluke.UUCP> <1397@orca.UUCP>
Reply-To: lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens)
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 18
Summary: 
Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL

> Where were YOU when the call went out for people to
> participate in the ANSI Basic committee?

Suppose a call goes out for a committee to decide on the color with which
the housedoors in your neighbourhood are to be painted.  This not quite
being your kettle of fish, you don't participate.  Now this committee
decides that housedoors defigurate the neighbourhood and are unfriendly to a
community spirit, and should be replaced by curtains.  You complain.  Would
you accept the rebuttal: "Where were YOU ..."?

Similarly, if the call is about standardizing an existing language, but the
committee goes off and designs a new language that has everything the
original language does not have ...
-- 

     Lambert Meertens
     ...!{seismo,philabs,decvax}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP
     CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam