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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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cite="mid:CAC20D2Pe262BfjueY+1L7MR2f=Ev3JTxrXSgRORxZSY3M42HnA@mail.gmail.com"
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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>
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<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"
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<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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