On Feb 18, 2009, at 3:04 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Message: 11 > Date: Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:04:00 -0800 > From: Thomas Lord <[email protected]>
Posted at http://blog.plt-scheme.org/ Sorry for the remnants of html -- Matthias > Election time is here again. A couple more days and the Scheme > community will have a set of new steer-ers. > I have argued at this place before that good language design needs > a feedback loop. Language designers write down specs; language > implementers translate those specs into compilers and interpreters; > programmers use these implementations to produce useful software. > The loop comes in when implementers inform designers of flaws, > inconsistencies, mistakes, errors, and other internal consistency > problems in the specs. This is clearly happening with R6RS, and it > is good. Implementers are a biased bunch, however. After all, they > work on just one kind of program, and in a highly specialized > domain that has been mined for a long time. How can you trust them? > [*] > > The loop becomes truly useful when people write large software > systems (not just compilers, because they really are special > cases!) and find that the language fails them in some way. Such > failures can come in a number of flavors. For a document such as > R6RS, we should hope that programmers can discover problems with > porting systems that are apparently due to ambiguities, flaws, > mistakes, roaches in the actual document (as opposed to a specific > implementation) > > The last thing we want from a steering committee is a radical > commitment to change (whatever it may be); a prejudice concerning > R6RS; a closed mind about the size of "Scheme" (it's too large, > it's too small); a willingness to steer without making > observations. A steering committee of overbearing curmudgeons is > not what we want. > > What we do want is a committee that is willing to figure out how > the listening is going to happen; how we can possibly finance a > systematic way of listening (writing NSF grants, anyone?); how the > feedback is best channeled into language design. > > Let's hope we get such a steering committee. The Scheme community > deserves it. _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
