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It was implied that the designers of C++ are not using the abstract mathematical tools provided by research, but that simply isn't true. Making tractable extensions to C++'s generic programming capabilities requires solid theory and the guys down the hall from me here at Texas A&M simply blow my mind with the kinds of things they are working on. On Sat, Apr 20, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Uday S Reddy <u.s.re...@cs.bham.ac.uk>wrote: > [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list] > > Avik Chaudhuri writes: > > > I would happily endorse these ideas. In fact, this is what I think > > would constitute "applied PL research": understanding, evaluating, > > critiquing, and shepherding new programming languages, which I > believe > > will necessarily come from outside our community because it is the > > application develepors who understand best where the needs are for > new > > languages. > > > > I humbly contest this position. It is not the responsibility of others to > > pick up ideas from "our community" and apply it to the "real languages." > > At least some of us should (and do) devote enough time to popularize > these > > ideas. We desperately need more people like this: > > http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/. > > Perhaps I didn't express myself very clearly. I meant to say that > interesting new languages will necessarily come from outside our community. > But *we* should engage with them as part of our "applied PL research" to > understand, analyze, critique and perhaps help their language designs. > > A strong example that comes to my mind is Dijkstra's efforts during the > DoD's requisitioning for the language that eventually became Ada. Dijkstra > closely studied all the DoD requirements and every language proposal that > was submitted, and critiqued them. His critiques were published in SIGPLAN > Notices and should be available in the ACM Digital Library (as well as the > EWD collections). Even though you might think this was a rather negative > form of engagement, it was still useful for the world to understand how > programming language principles impact or should impact programming > language > design. > > I am also happy to recollect an oft-repeated aphorism of John Reynolds: > "Programming language semanticists should be the obstetricians of > programming languages, not their coroners." > > Cheers, > Uday >
