Re: Standard Library Interest?

[Marin David Condic <nobody@noplace.com>]

Yes, its true that the ARG will fix problems, but please be fair about 
it. The ARG wouldn't, for example, discover that Java just added a 
library branch to cover Computational Fluid Dynamics that was proving to 
be wildly popular and decide that this was a "problem" for Ada and 
release a CFD library of their own within 6 months. So realistically, 
you're looking at a ten year cycle before a new library branch could be 
added.

Also, it might be technically true that the language comes up for 
revision review on a 5 year cycle, but given that it is almost 2004, 
we'd have Ada83..Ada95..Ada04 - looks pretty much like 10 years to me, 
plus or minus a little. So while the review of Ada95 should have started 
in 2000, it isn't at all realistic to presume that we're going to start 
the next review cycle in 2005 when we have not yet got Ada0x out the door.

I'm not criticizing the ARG or its efforts or the value of the standard. 
It definitely *needs* some stability and a long review cycle and careful 
consideration given to each item included in it and extreme detail 
outlined to make each item validatable. What I'm saying is that when you 
want to provide features or functionality that doesn't require a 
revision of the compiler and you want to react quickly to market 
demands, the standard is *not* the place to go because it simply takes 
too long. Hence my appeal to get a library outside of the ARM.

MDC


Robert I. Eachus wrote:
> standard has a slow revision cycle.  Technically, the standard is 
> considered for revision every five years, but in practice if there are 
> problems, the ARG will fix them as soon as possible.  Unicode/ISO10646 



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