On Friday, 4 July 2014 at 20:28:36 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
There's no such thing as done for a working language. C++, for example, is constantly in flux. Every release by every vendor alters which parts of the standard and draft standard it supports.
And no sane devs rely on those experimental parts unless g++ or clang commits themselves to them. The C++ standard specs out things in advance at intervals specified in years, not weeks.
Furthermore, the C/C++ Standards don't have much to say about how floating point works - how is that of any help in writing professional, stable fp code?
You know that you are on your own and cannot make assumptions about conformance, and address it with code (like ifdefs).
Do we want to make the spec better? Yes.
Not make the spec better or bring it up to date with the implementation. Spec out the language so people know what the missing bits are.
Please, contribute to the things you care about, instead of suggesting in the n.g. that others should do it. That would be far more helpful.
That would imply a fork. And yes, I think that might be the most likely outcome that someone forks it.
I don't believe in language design by a comittee. I think the language designers should spec out their vision. Let the community point out the flaws. Go back to the drawing board. Do some rounds. Then commit to it.
I think that would attract more contribution to the core language development.
I am interested in contributing code to make a good spec come to life, not to add noise to an endless contractual metamorphosis that never will lead to anything consistent and coherent.
