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<p>I meant to say engineer "out" the necessity ...doh ! I shot
myself in the foot there ...<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/13/2023 12:24 PM, Luther Johnson
wrote:<br>
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<p>I agree with everything you just said here.<br>
</p>
One of the motivations behind new dialects and languages, which I
think is very harmful, is the idea that we can and should,
engineer the necessity to know and understand what we are doing
when we program in a given language. I'm not talking about
semantic leverage, higher level languages with more abstract
functions on more abstract data, there are real benefits there, we
will all probably agree to that.<br>
<br>
I'm talking more about where the intent is to invest languages
with more "safety", "good practices", to bake certain preferences
into language features, so that writers no longer recognize these
as engineering choices, and the language as a means of expression
of any choice we might make, but that the language has built-in
"the right way" to do things, and if the program compiles and runs
at all, then it must be safe and working in certain respects.<br>
<br>
No matter what language, craft and knowledge are not optional. The
language that we choose for a problem domain wants to give us
freedom to express our choices, while taking care of the things
that wold otherwise weigh us down. Some people would say that's
exactly what the new dialects bring us, but I see too much
artificial orthodoxy invented last week, and too many declarations
of the "one true way", in many of the most recent languages, for
my taste.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 03/13/2023 12:00 PM, Clem Cole
wrote:<br>
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style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at
12:00 PM Paul Winalski <<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:paul.winalski@gmail.com">paul.winalski@gmail.com</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><span
class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">... </span>The<span
class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"> </span>committee's
goal is to standardize existing practice of the language<br>
in a way that is implementable on the widest range of
hardware and OS<br>
platforms, <u><i>and to provide a controlled way to add
language extensions.</i></u></blockquote>
<div><span class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Ah, the
problem, of course, is right there.</span> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">Too many
people try to "fix" programming languages, particularly
academics and folks working on a new PhD. Other folks
(Gnu is the best example IMO) want to change things so
the compiler writers (and it seems like the Linux kernel
developers) can do something "better" or "more
easily." </span><span
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">As
someone (I think Dan Cross) said, when that happens,
it's no longer C. Without Dennis here to say "whoa," -
the committee is a tad open loop. Today's language is
hardly the language I learned before the "White Book"
existed in the early/mid 1970s. It's actually quite
sad. I'm not so sure we are "better" off.</span></div>
<div><span class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif"><br>
</span></div>
<div>Frankly<span class="gmail_default"
style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif">, I'd
probably rather see ISO drop a bunch of the stuff they
are now requiring and fall back at least to K&R2 --
keep it simple. The truth is that we still use the
language today is that K&R2 C was then (and still
is) good enough and got (gets) the job done extremely
well. Overall, I'm not sure all the new "features"
have added all that much.</span><br>
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