Mike O'Keefe
Posts: 16
Nickname: kupci2
Registered: Mar, 2005
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Re: The Positive Legacy of C++ and Java
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Posted: Mar 18, 2009 7:37 PM
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> > <p>Because I was on the C++ Standards Committee, I saw > > these decisions > So we know committees don’t work even if they are > comprised of experts. I’d have thought that the community
I was wondering if anyone was going to catch this point. Seems that the author doesn't like features if he wasn't part of the "design by committee", take his stance on checked exceptions, there are very good points on the opposing side. The debate continues, and pleasing everybody is, well, read on ...
> process would be a great thing because of “community” > involvement. I don’t know much about JCP but even with > that model it’s like a hit or miss thing – Concurrency JSR > I think was a success but few say that about Generics JSR.
The interesting thing about the Concurrency libs is that they were mostly written by a few people, and then brought into Java 1.5, whereas with generics, while there were various competing strategies, I don't think anything out there had quite as established and proven as util.concurrent. So the Generics debate went back and forth, in more of a "design by committee" fashion, trying to please everybody, and so they made some technical shortcuts, mainly to ensure they wouldn't have to change the JVM, almost exactly the same sort of thing that made CORBA bindings overly complicated, because of some limitations imposed by IBM in the standards.
One other interesting point on the recent closures debate, going on in a similar fashion to the generics thing, is that Gosling originally planned to have closures in the language (I'm sure this is one of Eckel's complaints, given his Ruby leanings).
I'm not against the JCP, in fact I'm a member, but I'd rather have a clean design, without shortcuts, and keeping to the original, simple philosophy of Java, than a "try and please everybody". This gets harder and harder as the language gets to be as important and significant as Java. As another example, look at the difficulty with Microsoft and Windows, changes are not easy.
Somehow Linus manages, it seems, better with Linux, but perhaps because he doesn't have shareholders breathing down his neck, and keeps to his "release it when it's ready" philosophy. And with his hard-edged no-nonsense personality, he probably could care less about his detractors, no matter how much they complain. As you can see with Eckel's and Generics, they are never satisfied.
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