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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Which language pays most? Smalltalk, not C++ nor Java.
Date: 1997/12/29
Message-ID: <dewar.883445953@merv>#1/1
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Date: 1997-12-29T00:00:00+00:00
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<<Keep on dreaming.  No language, ever, can be defined by a piece of paper.
Unless it is a dead language that is no longer used and therefore no longer
changes.  This concept is simply impossible.
>>


This is complete nonsense. It does not correspond to the real situation
with many standardized languages. Many programmers know the C standard
well, carefully adhere to it, and succeed in writing portable code, and
the same thing can be said of Fortran, COBOL and Ada programmers (
particularly in the latter case, Ada programmers tend to know the standard
well).

The idea that a language wanders around ill-defined, and programmers follow
it may seem familiar to undisciplined hackers, but it does not required
dreamers to correct this totally unacceptable behavior!

<<Only programmers who have no concept of what a language, any language is.
Even if the Standard does define the language, it only did so on the day
the standard was finalized.  Languages, even programming language, evolve
and change over time.  A Standards document can never be a current
definition of a language, only the definition of the language at some point
in the past.  Even so, the ANSI/ISO Standards defining C only define the
common core of the C language.  When C9X is finalized, at that moment it
will define the core of the C programming language.  By the time it is
actually published and distributed the language will have changed to a
small extent.
>>

Sounds like you have very little direct experience with language
standardization efforts, your account above bares no relation to reality.