credibility of X3J11 (was volatile: is NOT...)

[William E. Davidsen Jr]

I never thought I'd be defending the ANSI committee, but I have seen
several postings recently which cast some undeserved doubt on the
workings of the committee.

  Please note that I am NOT commenting on the technical points involved,
simply the statements which infer collusion of vendors.

>In article <7794 at alice.UUCP>, dmr at alice.UUCP writes:
>	... notes on volatile ...
>
> Has anyone else noticed that a lot of the more peculiar things that X3J11
> has added (volatile, and especially noalias) are there for the
> benefit of compiler writers and benchmarkers, and not for the user?
> (I know how it happens, though; after all, I invented 'register.')

>From: lvc at tut.cis.ohio-state.edu (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
>Subject: Re: volatile isn't necessary, but it's there
>Summary: abs() belongs in <math.h>
>Date: 7 Apr 88 23:51:56 GMT
>...
>Flame on: Of all the stupid things I read in the draft this takes the
>cake.  Why don't the vendors fix their stupid compilers and leave the
><math.h> users alone!  Come on!  abs() is a math function and <math.h>
>is where it belongs!
>Flame off:
>...
>Future language standardizations should have more representation by
>users, and this should be required by ANSI.  We've been had one too
>many times.

>Subject: Re: volatile isn't necessary, but it's there
>Date: 7 Apr 88 16:15:33 GMT
>Reply-To: gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
>...
>As I suspect Dennis knows, by far the majority of the X3J11 committee
>are C implementors or at least represent the interests of C implementors.
>The "user advocates" sometimes have an uphill battle, especially on
>issues that are perceived as affecting the marketability of C compilers.
>...

  I hate to put my neck out, but I was there. I was representing GE Corp
R&D Center for the first two years of the standards work (until out T&L
budget got cut), and it wasn't like that.

  For some time I was the sole non-vendor member, and I did have to
bring up a number of points on behalf of the user. A the rest of the
committee listened! These people use C, too, and they want it to be a
good language standard.

  There were times when a change was proposed, and someone would explain
what it took to implement, and the change would be dropped. Not because
it was "too hard" to do it, but because the result would be to big and
slow to run on smaller computers. That's a valid point, and there were
only a few of these issues.

  I feel that I was able to present my user-only point of view, but
really, I don't think the standard would have been much diferent if I
hadn't been there. All this sniping about the vendors doing this and
that to the detriment of the users is I'll considered, and in my mind
detracts from the strength of the technical points being made.

{ descend from soapbox to cheers of crowd }
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu at ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me