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Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) or vehicles for inter-cor

by blasdel 17y ago

Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) or vehicles for inter-corporate bullying?

mbreese 17y ago
That was my first thought too... "Well, there goes innovation in Ruby".
- steveklabnik 17y ago
  It's based on 1.8.7, so no worries on that front.
- jdminhbg 17y ago
  Just because there's a standard doesn't mean you have to follow it. I'm sure MacRuby for example will keep its divergent selector syntax; they just won't advertise themselves as conformant to the standard.
  - jamesbritt 17y ago
    "they just won't advertise themselves as conformant to the standard." But they should advertise themselves as non-conformant to the standard.
- halostatue 17y ago
  Not even likely. The spec/standard is based around 1.8.7 and does not yet address 1.9->2.0. Most of the innovation in Ruby lately has been in how things have been used, not syntactically. My understanding is that the standard will largely be compliant with RubySpec, pioneered by Rubinius.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
j_baker 17y ago
Who was it that said something like "standards are always outdated... that's why they're standards"?
- carbon8 17y ago
  And as it says in the draft spec, the reason they are using 1.8.7 is basically because it's a dead end version of Ruby and, therefore, isn't changing.
- jhancock 17y ago
  My favorite: "Standards are great. Everyone should have one."
stcredzero 17y ago
Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) We're zombies!? Actually, that's kinda cool. You can consider the Smalltalk image as a single program, with branching, mutating clones, which has been running continuously, modulo suspending (image save) since sometime in the 1970s. Maybe that's where our unkillable, repeatedly come-back-from-the-dead nature comes from? (You can't build a Smalltalk-80 image from scratch because of "strange loops." We've been doing binary transformations to pre-existing images all this time! Even the Squeak image was produced this way. (Dolphin image as well, I believe)) But back to "standards." The Smalltalk standard was pretty wimpy for most if its iterations. It was a watered-down inter-corporate Détente. Not sure about the most recent one.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  "(You can't build a Smalltalk-80 image from scratch because of "strange loops." We've been doing binary transformations to pre-existing images all this time! Even the Squeak image was produced this way." Wow! You mean a Squeak image can't be fully built from source? That's kind of... scary. It also reminds me of how we do Plone upgrades... I always cross my fingers.
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    That's kind of... scary. Lots of things in Smalltalk evoke that reaction. But while others get to tremble in fear of imagined disasters, we Smalltalkers get to know the truth: that lots of the "conventional wisdom" is nonsense!
  - cma 17y ago
    Is it that crazy? Aren't most C compilers self-hosting too?
  - derefr 17y ago
    Rather than doing binary translations, though, wouldn't it be easier to just establish a primitive in the smalltalk VM that constructs, as an atomic operation, a graph of interrelated object references, then hands out the IDs to be populated with data?
0wned 17y ago
C and C++ for starters.

by blasdel 17y ago

Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) or vehicles for inter-corporate bullying?

mbreese 17y ago

That was my first thought too... "Well, there goes innovation in Ruby".

steveklabnik 17y ago
It's based on 1.8.7, so no worries on that front.
jdminhbg 17y ago
Just because there's a standard doesn't mean you have to follow it. I'm sure MacRuby for example will keep its divergent selector syntax; they just won't advertise themselves as conformant to the standard.
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "they just won't advertise themselves as conformant to the standard." But they should advertise themselves as non-conformant to the standard.
halostatue 17y ago
Not even likely. The spec/standard is based around 1.8.7 and does not yet address 1.9->2.0. Most of the innovation in Ruby lately has been in how things have been used, not syntactically. My understanding is that the standard will largely be compliant with RubySpec, pioneered by Rubinius.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

j_baker 17y ago

Who was it that said something like "standards are always outdated... that's why they're standards"?

carbon8 17y ago
And as it says in the draft spec, the reason they are using 1.8.7 is basically because it's a dead end version of Ruby and, therefore, isn't changing.
jhancock 17y ago
My favorite: "Standards are great. Everyone should have one."

stcredzero 17y ago

Are there any languages for which international standardization processes have not been either tombstones (like Smalltalk, repeatedly) We're zombies!? Actually, that's kinda cool. You can consider the Smalltalk image as a single program, with branching, mutating clones, which has been running continuously, modulo suspending (image save) since sometime in the 1970s. Maybe that's where our unkillable, repeatedly come-back-from-the-dead nature comes from? (You can't build a Smalltalk-80 image from scratch because of "strange loops." We've been doing binary transformations to pre-existing images all this time! Even the Squeak image was produced this way. (Dolphin image as well, I believe)) But back to "standards." The Smalltalk standard was pretty wimpy for most if its iterations. It was a watered-down inter-corporate Détente. Not sure about the most recent one.

rbanffy 17y ago
"(You can't build a Smalltalk-80 image from scratch because of "strange loops." We've been doing binary transformations to pre-existing images all this time! Even the Squeak image was produced this way." Wow! You mean a Squeak image can't be fully built from source? That's kind of... scary. It also reminds me of how we do Plone upgrades... I always cross my fingers.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  That's kind of... scary. Lots of things in Smalltalk evoke that reaction. But while others get to tremble in fear of imagined disasters, we Smalltalkers get to know the truth: that lots of the "conventional wisdom" is nonsense!
- cma 17y ago
  Is it that crazy? Aren't most C compilers self-hosting too?
- derefr 17y ago
  Rather than doing binary translations, though, wouldn't it be easier to just establish a primitive in the smalltalk VM that constructs, as an atomic operation, a graph of interrelated object references, then hands out the IDs to be populated with data?

0wned 17y ago

C and C++ for starters.