Re: New style DO syntax?

Jan Vorbrüggen wrote:
And, you keep arguing as if it's *me* personally that has missed
the boat and should attend. I'm talking about the whole Fortran
user community which *needs* to perceive that they are involved
and not disregarded. Otherwise the language will continue to
die. The most common comment I heard about the F2003
standard is that the committee has continued to ignore the needs
of the average user, and that they feel powerless of change that
fact. I share that view. The continued absence of genuinely
*public* debate reinforces that perception.

Nothing you or I say are going to change the way ISO and the
correspon- ding national bodies - in Germany, DIN - conduct business.
I would prefer that DIN be publicly funded, but it isn't. Therefore,
it must and does charge for participating in committees - [...]

Which is one of the reason it's vital to have other means of
contributing outside of membership - and to *press* for those
means in an aggressive way.

[...] about a
kiloeuro per year - and ISO rules make clear that this is a
requirement in order to be able to vote. That's what Dan meant by
"playing by the rules".

In politics there's a phrase that says people often "vote with
their feet." It means that if people don't like their government,
they *leave*. Why do you think there's such a big flap over
immigration? However, Fortran and other languages have no
boundaries and no immigration authorities - people can leave
Fortran any time they like. They do. Collectively, those "no"
votes have a lot more power than being on the committee.
If you want to keep Fortran alive, you need people migrating
the other way. Public debate (and responsiveness from
the committee to that debate) is the only way I can think of.
Have you a better idea?

Most of the gripes I hear here about where Fortran is heading with
the '03 standard I consider badly argued, based on flawed
information, etc., and I definitely would _not_ want it to be
considered by ISO. [...]

Another advantage of widespread public debate.

If you don't like the process, change the process - don't beat the
people who are running it at the moment, of which a substantial
fraction, I think likely, don't like (a large?) part of that process,
either.

Changing the process requires proactive openness from the very
people you claim I shouldn't bother. If you think I'm being
unreasonable, well remember the quote:

A reasonable man adapts himself to suit his environment. An
unreasonable man persists in attempting to adapt his environment
to suit himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable
man.
-- G.B. Shaw

--
J. Giles

"I conclude that there are two ways of constructing a software
design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously
no deficiencies and the other way is to make it so complicated
that there are no obvious deficiencies." -- C. A. R. Hoare


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Relevant Pages

  • Invitation to comment on Final Committee Draft for Fortran 2003
    ... The Final Committee Draft of the next standard for Fortran has ... Lists" item in the menu on the left, and then on "j3" near the top of the ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
  • Re: New style DO syntax?
    ... I'm talking about the whole Fortran ... user community which *needs* to perceive that they are involved ... ding national bodies - in Germany, ... ISO rules make clear that this is a requirement in order to be able to vote. ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
  • Re: New style DO syntax?
    ... Many new languages develop quite fast and fairly ... successfully because there is a lot of open, public involvement. ... Fortran works with a committee system, ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
  • Fortran 2008 (was Re: Statement function host association)
    ... Has the committee voted to remove any other features from Fortran 2008? ... committee has still not begun work on a new version of the C standard. ... the progressives having moved to C++ long ago. ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
  • Re: advice on books to learn cobol
    ... committee funded by the Department of Defense) and has been around, like, ... but I recall being taught that FORTRAN predated COBOL. ... The first manual for FORTRAN appeared in October 1956, ... Defense. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)