Still not D standard yet ?

[via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Saturday, 29 November 2014 at 17:48:31 UTC, Jonathan M Davis 
via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> On Saturday, November 29, 2014 10:35:32 bachmeier via 
> Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
>> C was standardized in 1989. C++ was standardized in 1998. I'm
>> unaware of ISO (or any other) standardization for Go, Python,
>> Perl, Objective C, or PHP.

C and C++ have improved by being faced with a standardization 
process, but they also had many implementations before they 
started. I don't think D qualifies for ISO standardization.

But Python is a bad example. Several incompatible versions of 
Python are being used, this is bad for the Python community. 
Python 2.7 carries so much weight today that the commercial 
sector are developing JITs for it, and ignoring Python 3… It 
might have been easier to move forward with formal 
standardization since that would have given Python 3 more weight.

Go is not standardized yet, probably because they aren't done?

Google did standardize Dart with ECMA, so they clearly see the 
value. The ECMAScript standardization has been very important IMO.

> production at this point. An ISO standard isn't even vaguely 
> necessary for a
> language to succeed. It might be nice to have, but it's not 
> required.

Standardization might be a requirement for use in larger 
governmental projects. Having a standard makes the language 
"electible" from an evaluation point of view.


> Standarizing the language at this stage would harm those 
> efforts, and we'd
> end up with a worse language as a result.

Yes, D is not ready for standardization, but a formal write up is 
needed.

Having to write up a formal specification will put light on 
special cases and inconsistencies, so having a formal write up is 
probably more important than formal standardization at this point.