language standards

language standards

[Robert Dewar]

Jon said

<<Does this mean that you believe that there should not be any language
standards?  Probably not.  But that is what you are saying, even
thought that is almost certainly not what you mean.>>

Robert said

<<nope, it is not what I am saying (by any stretch of misinterpretation)>>

Jon said

<<Actually, on the face of it - it's precisely what you were saying.>>

Robert replies

nonsense! I guess you can stretch the art of wishful misinterpretation
beyond any boundary I can imagine. Of course I did not say that there
should not be any language standards. You cannot find any statement
to that effect. You think you can prove it using some faulty
syllogism based on your own ideas, i.e. you are saying something like

   Dewar says A
   Jon says A means B
   Therefore Dewar says B

I don't think this logic would win a passing grade on a logic exam :-)

Re: language standards

[Jon S Anthony]

In article <dewar.857664647@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:

> <<nope, it is not what I am saying (by any stretch of misinterpretation)>>
> 
> Jon said
> 
> <<Actually, on the face of it - it's precisely what you were saying.>>
> 
> Robert replies
> 
> nonsense! I guess you can stretch the art of wishful misinterpretation
> beyond any boundary I can imagine. Of course I did not say that there
> should not be any language standards. You cannot find any statement
> to that effect. You think you can prove it using some faulty
> syllogism based on your own ideas, i.e. you are saying something like

Let's have a simple recap, not your silly, phony, strawman syllogism:

Here is the exact exchange (from good ol' dejanews):

---------
Robert quotes:
<<<
Robert:
> to even considering elaborate pattern matching stuff, there are too
> many ways to approach this problem to decree one as standard. Similarly
> for GC, it is clear that there would be no consensus on this addition.

Jon:
There are "too many" ways to approach a language design to decree any
as standard.  Sounds pretty silly, eh?>>
>>>

And then replies:
Not to anyone with any experience in language standardization.
---------

Now, on the face of it, your sentence here says that it is not silly
to say that there are "too many" ways to approach a language design to
decree any as standard.  Tell us, what other possible meaning could
there be?

Now, you go on _later_ to _introduce_ the _new_ requirement of "and no
agreement".  Of course, you also go on to simply apriori _decree_ that
there could _not possibly_ be any agreement.  I suppose that's how you
got confused about it all.

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com

Re: language standards

[Larry Kilgallen]

In article <JSA.97Mar7151431@alexandria>, jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) writes:

> Let's have a simple recap, not your silly, phony, strawman syllogism:

Oh, let's not.  Everyone who is following this (I suspect a maximum
of two people) has probably made up their mind about whose posts
are more consistent.  The rest of us don't care.

Best regards to both sides,

Larry Kilgallen

Re: language standards

[Robert Dewar]

Jon Anthony says

<<Now, on the face of it, your sentence here says that it is not silly
to say that there are "too many" ways to approach a language design to
decree any as standard.  Tell us, what other possible meaning could
there be?

Now, you go on _later_ to _introduce_ the _new_ requirement of "and no
agreement".  Of course, you also go on to simply apriori _decree_ that
there could _not possibly_ be any agreement.  I suppose that's how you
got confused about it all.>>

I really can't follow this peculiar reasoning, but I am guessing that
you have very little (no?) experience in programming language
standardization.

In practice, if there are many possible technical approaches to a problem,
then it is extremely hard, and many would say inappropriate, to standardize
one. It can sometimes be done, but you spend many chips to get it done.
Generally a standard development proceeds from consensus, adopting things
that everyone can agree on. A counter example in Ada 83 was tasking, and
there I think the standard succeeded not because there were not lots of
different aprpoaches, but rather that there was not much experience in
embedding concurrency in languages, so there was not muc in the way
of built-in constituencies.

The closest case in Ada 95 would be the distribution annex, where two
fudnamental approaches (RPC and message passing) clashed, and it was
quite a delicate balance to get a standard in this area.

In a case like GC, or pattern matching, where there really are many
different technical approaches (even in the SNOBOL camp, the declarative
vs procedural style, SNOBOL embodying the first more, and ICON the second,
is far from resolved), there is no possibility in my opinion of achieving
the kind of consensus that is required for an ISO standard.

So, once again (reread my statements that you kindly quoted), my point is
that if there are many possible technical approaches to a question, and
there is no clear consensus on which is the best, then you are unlikely
to be able to standardize in that area.

How that translates in your mind to me making a blanket statement that
there should be no language standards is still completely beyond me.
I can't even figure out the chain of reasoning, perhaps it is something
like:

  Dewar says you can't standardize something where there are many approaches
  All features in programming languages have many approaches
  Therefore ...

But the weakness is in the second step, since it just isn't true, we are
developing major areas of general agreement on how programming language
design should be approached at this stage, and indeed the basis of
the Ada 83 design was  that, with the exception of tasking, it was based
on established engineering approaches around which a consensus had
developed

In any case, rest assured that I *do* think programming languages
should be standardized (I was involved heavily in the standardization
of Algol-60 modified, the standarization work on Algol-68, and the
standardization of both Ada 83 and Ada 95, and I definitely do not
think that I was wasting my time :-) :-)

Re: language standards

[Jon S Anthony]

In article <dewar.857783781@merv> dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar) writes:


[a lot of sensible stuff which is irrelevant to the (very simple) issue]

> So, once again (reread my statements that you kindly quoted), my point is
> that if there are many possible technical approaches to a question, and
> there is no clear consensus on which is the best, then you are unlikely
> to be able to standardize in that area.

Yes, I know that is your point.  That is _not_ what you put forth as
your starting thesis though!


> How that translates in your mind to me making a blanket statement that
> there should be no language standards is still completely beyond me.

It doesn't.  You simply _said_ that very thing as your thesis.


> I can't even figure out the chain of reasoning, perhaps it is something
> like:
> 
>   Dewar says you can't standardize something where there are many approaches
>   All features in programming languages have many approaches
>   Therefore ...

You are putting _way_ too much into this.  You simply goofed in your
starting statement of your thesis.  It may have even been a typo!  You
simply _said_ that it was _not_ silly to say that all efforts at
standardization were futile.

/Jon
-- 
Jon Anthony
Organon Motives, Inc.
Belmont, MA 02178
617.484.3383
jsa@organon.com