The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Paul Winalski <paul.winalski@gmail.com>
Cc: Alejandro Colomar <alx.manpages@gmail.com>, TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: [TUHS] Re: [TUHS]: C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2023 18:06:20 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20230314010620.GR9225@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABH=_VTOT9+fQ4+6Yj5G441kd6O0VWgXGnc6t6+0pofNVtDz5g@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Mar 13, 2023 at 04:48:04PM -0400, Paul Winalski wrote:
> On 3/13/23, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> >
> > 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."  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.
> 
> I'd rather see programming language standards committees restrict
> their activity to regularizing existing practice.  Let vendors and
> others innovate by adding non-standard extensions.  Then take those
> that are really useful and adopt them as part of the standard.  But
> the committee itself should not be doing design.  We all know what
> they say about "design by committee", and it's all too true.

I wish I had a magic wand and could upvote this more.  You are exactly
right, that is exactly what standards should do, maybe with a little
leeway to resolve conflicts between 2 good ideas, but no more than
that.

But ego gets involved and things go pear shaped.

  parent reply	other threads:[~2023-03-14  1:06 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 44+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-03-10 11:37 [TUHS] Re: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary Noel Chiappa
2023-03-10 11:51 ` [TUHS] Conditions, AKA exceptions. (Was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary) Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-10 15:54 ` [TUHS] Re: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary Dan Cross
2023-03-12  7:39   ` Anthony Martin
2023-03-12 11:40     ` Dan Cross
2023-03-12 16:40       ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13  3:25       ` John Cowan
2023-03-13 10:40         ` Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)
2023-03-13 12:19           ` Dan Cross
2023-03-13 12:43             ` [TUHS] [TUHS]: C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary) Alejandro Colomar
2023-03-13 12:46               ` [TUHS] " Dan Cross
2023-03-13 16:00               ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13 19:00                 ` Clem Cole
2023-03-13 19:09                   ` Larry McVoy
2023-03-13 19:17                   ` Steve Nickolas
2023-03-13 20:26                     ` Dan Cross
2023-03-13 22:25                       ` Alejandro Colomar (man-pages)
2023-03-13 19:24                   ` [TUHS] Re: [TUHS]: C dialects Luther Johnson
2023-03-13 19:38                     ` Luther Johnson
2023-03-14 19:48                     ` John Cowan
2023-03-14 19:56                       ` Joseph Holsten
2023-03-14 20:01                       ` Luther Johnson
2023-03-13 20:48                   ` [TUHS] Re: [TUHS]: C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary) Paul Winalski
2023-03-13 20:56                     ` Bakul Shah
2023-03-14  1:06                     ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2023-03-13 21:00                   ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-13 21:07                     ` Bakul Shah
2023-03-13 21:14                       ` Dan Cross
2023-03-13 22:15                         ` Dave Horsfall
2023-03-13 22:47                           ` Dave Horsfall
2023-03-14  0:23                             ` Dan Cross
2023-03-14  0:21                           ` Dan Cross
2023-03-14 13:52                             ` Chet Ramey
2023-03-14  1:27                         ` Bakul Shah
2023-03-13 21:28                       ` Paul Winalski
2023-03-14 10:04                       ` [TUHS] C dialects Ralph Corderoy
2023-03-14 20:02                         ` [TUHS] " John Cowan
2023-03-14 21:34                           ` Thomas Paulsen
2023-03-14  0:38                     ` [TUHS] Re: [TUHS]: C dialects (was: I can't drive 55: "GOTO considered harmful" 55th anniversary) John Cowan
2023-03-14  2:49                 ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-03-14  3:06                   ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-03-15  3:59 Noel Chiappa
2023-03-15  4:33 ` John Cowan
2023-03-16 22:50 ` Bakul Shah

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20230314010620.GR9225@mcvoy.com \
    --to=lm@mcvoy.com \
    --cc=alx.manpages@gmail.com \
    --cc=paul.winalski@gmail.com \
    --cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).