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All recent variants of OpenGL were derived from the most successful OpenGL extensions by vendors like NVidia, ATI, 3dfx, S3, et al. They shipped them first, de

All recent variants of OpenGL were derived from the most successful OpenGL extensions by vendors like NVidia, ATI, 3dfx, S3, et al. They shipped them first, developers even picked them up in games via extension detection. Then later versions got the extensions. NVidia Cg preceded GLSL. Lots of stuff stolen from DirectX "behind closed doors" OpenGL is not a good example of companies designing things in the open by commitee.

kevingadd 13y ago
I like how I keep saying 'in the open' and you keep saying 'by committee'. OpenGL extensions are the textbook example of what I'm talking about: Published documentation of the API surface, what it does, etc. EDIT: However, I should be clear that you are correct that their initial design was traditionally done at a vendor behind closed doors, so they certainly could have been more open than they were. Whether that would have actually been possible in the IP-laden, slow-development-cycle of hardware graphics is another question, but nonetheless...
cromwellian 13y ago
And which part of the Dart API or language isn't documented? The Dart language spec has been published since 0.1 with every change in the change log, and every change discussed on public mailing lists. http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/latest/dart-language-specification.html http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/latest/dart-language-speci... Can you explain to me how this is different than NVidia or ATI publishing an extension for hardware they already spent millions on and 18 months preparing to ship? OpenGL extensions would be pointless without documentation. If NVidia adds Register Combiners or Multitexture extensions, how else would developers use them without docs? Don't sugar coat what happened in the 3D industry. NVidia would introduce new HW with non-standard features, create an extension for them, and then secretly work with triple-A developers in the industry on it before publishing it in the open. Microsoft's process of herding them into an interoperable spec was actually far better than OpenGL, and yet we still got the whole PS1.2/1.3 vs PS1.4 affair. All of the development happened in secret, including the final, taped out chip and shipping card, before the first external person got to comment on the extension. I'm not trying to be insulting here, but this criticism on Dart seems deranged. The Dart Team published a language spec, documentation, held 3 years of open discussion on mailing lists, changed the language 42 times based on feedback, generates most of its documentation directly from standard WebIDL and from MDN (!), and every commit to the dart VM and dart2js compiler has happened in the open.

kevingadd 13y ago

I like how I keep saying 'in the open' and you keep saying 'by committee'. OpenGL extensions are the textbook example of what I'm talking about: Published documentation of the API surface, what it does, etc. EDIT: However, I should be clear that you are correct that their initial design was traditionally done at a vendor behind closed doors, so they certainly could have been more open than they were. Whether that would have actually been possible in the IP-laden, slow-development-cycle of hardware graphics is another question, but nonetheless...

cromwellian 13y ago

And which part of the Dart API or language isn't documented? The Dart language spec has been published since 0.1 with every change in the change log, and every change discussed on public mailing lists. http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/latest/dart-language-specification.html http://www.dartlang.org/docs/spec/latest/dart-language-speci... Can you explain to me how this is different than NVidia or ATI publishing an extension for hardware they already spent millions on and 18 months preparing to ship? OpenGL extensions would be pointless without documentation. If NVidia adds Register Combiners or Multitexture extensions, how else would developers use them without docs? Don't sugar coat what happened in the 3D industry. NVidia would introduce new HW with non-standard features, create an extension for them, and then secretly work with triple-A developers in the industry on it before publishing it in the open. Microsoft's process of herding them into an interoperable spec was actually far better than OpenGL, and yet we still got the whole PS1.2/1.3 vs PS1.4 affair. All of the development happened in secret, including the final, taped out chip and shipping card, before the first external person got to comment on the extension. I'm not trying to be insulting here, but this criticism on Dart seems deranged. The Dart Team published a language spec, documentation, held 3 years of open discussion on mailing lists, changed the language 42 times based on feedback, generates most of its documentation directly from standard WebIDL and from MDN (!), and every commit to the dart VM and dart2js compiler has happened in the open.