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At 05:52 PM 12/6/2004 -0500, Wojtek Skulski wrote:
>Rex e-mail brings another point that I wanted to mention for a while.
>Once BB is released with source, some good soul may consider improving
>the language. We may soon be dealing with Extended CP, Enhanced CP,
>CP++, and who knows what dialects. Hope this will not happen, but
>from the spirit of recent discussions it looks to me some folks are
>itching to improve what we have got now.
It looks that way. I'm more worried about CP-- than CP++. There might be some benefit from adding _some_ features, especially if they attract new users. I kind of like Stan's named integers, and I wouldn't mind seeing reserved words permitted in lower case (C programmers hate all upper case).
BUT there may be unacceptable costs. Further development of dialects would be a disasterous situation. At the risk of excessive repetition, I have to stress that language changes need to be made only very carefully if at all, and the community has to agree -- i.e., they need to be made standard. Compiler writers need to adhere to the standards, and the changes had better not break code. Something tells me there are more urgent things to do right now, like getting it onto the major platforms, including working with Java and .NET.
My advice: If it works and it's simple, don't mess with it. Improve the documentation and appreciate what you've got.
----Fateful words uttered by some anonymous computer-industry executive: "You want standards? No problem. We've got lots of standards. And if you don't like those, we can write you some more."
Sincerely,
Rex Couture, Ph. D.
Dept. of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Campus Box 1169
Washington University in St. Louis
1 Brookings Dr.
St. Louis MO 63130
Voice: (314) 935-4194
Fax: (314) 935-7361
rex{([at]})nowhere.xy
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Received on Tue Dec 07 2004 - 15:37:42 UTC