evolution by committee

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <11619 at ut-sally.UUCP> nather at ut-sally.UUCP (Ed Nather) writes:
>The ideal way to proceed, in my view, would be to come up with a proposed
>standard, then give it to Dennis Ritchie and ask him to take out anything
>he finds offensive, replace awkwardnesses with better solutions if he can 
>find them, and take what he hands you back as the next "evolutionary step."

That's not too far from the way we actually proceeded,
except Dennis did not have absolute veto power, just a strong influence.
Except for type qualifiers and a couple of minor quibbles,
he has indicated his approval of the proposed standard.

>He may well not have the time nor inclination to do it, but I would ask.

In fact, in a congratulatory letter to X3J11, Dennis indicated just that.
(I know that *I* think his time is better spent on CS research than on
standards activities.)

Your point about slow iteration is well taken, but remember that it is
somewhat mitigated by having a hundred or so C experts reviewing every
proposal.  Sequential processing is traded off against parallel processing.

Finally, standards bodies wish for a standard to reflect the needs of
the user community.  Leaving a standard up to one person would not
give them much assurance of that.