From -259427523645325292 X-Google-Thread: f78e5,6294651cbc4b105c,start X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,CP1252 Path: g2news1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed.uncensored-news.com!news.alt.net!comp-std-cpp-robomod!not-for-mail From: John Nagle Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: C++ standard life cycle Date: 23 Aug 2005 02:20:05 GMT Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Lines: 60 Approved: Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++ Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Return-Path: X-Authentication-Warning: mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU: fjh set sender to devnull@stump.algebra.com using -f X-Robomod: STUMP, ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov) Delivered-To: std-c++@ucar.edu User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, ja X-Complaints-To: abuse@prodigy.net X-Trace: newssvr29.news.prodigy.net 1124695543 ST000 66.126.175.220 (Mon, 22 Aug 2005 03:25:43 EDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 03:25:43 EDT X-UserInfo1: SCSYQN_@FS@QBQLXCJKL^_TDEB\@PD\MNPWZKB]MPXHTEPIB_NVUAH_[BL[\IRKIANGGJBFNJF_DOLSCENSY^U@FRFUEXR@KFXYDBPWBCDQJA@X_DCBHXR[C@\EOKCJLED_SZ@RMWYXYWE_P@\\GOIW^@SYFFSWHFIXMADO@^[ADPRPETLBJ]RDGENSKQQZN X-Greylisting: NO DELAY (Relay+Sender autoqualified); processed by UCSD_GL-v2.1 on mailbox8.ucsd.edu; Mon, 22 August 2005 00:25:48 -0700 (PDT) X-Spamscanner: mailbox8.ucsd.edu (v1.6 Aug 4 2005 15:27:38, -2.8/5.0 3.0.4) X-MailScanner: PASSED (v1.2.8 18484 j7M7PhB9027254 mailbox8.ucsd.edu) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ucar.edu X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by mailman.ucar.edu id j7M7PxNC010619 X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.std.c++:1898 I just came across this note from the Pascal ISO standards committee: Annual Report for J9, Pascal June 2003 through June 2004 1. Executive Summary For the 5-year maintenance review for the U.S. Extended Pascal Standard, INCITS/ISO/IEC 10206 :1991 [1999], Information Technology - Programming languages - Extended Pascal, the committee voted unanimously (4-0-0) that the standard should be reaffirmed for another 5-year period. The status of the Pascal committee is in �Maintenance�. This corresponds with the Pascal and Extended Pascal standards projects, which are in maintenance mode. No meetings were held in 2003 and to date in 2004. All committee business is conducted via e-mail, telephone calls, and post. The last committee meeting was in April of 1995. Membership remains stable, as it has been for years, at four principal members. The positions of Vice Chairman, International Representative, and Vocabulary Representative remain vacant. No new work is anticipated at this time. === The first ISO standard for Pascal was issued in 1983. The Pascal working group was wound up on April 30, 1995, and there has been no new work since then. So that standards activity had a life of 12 years, a surprisingly short period for what was once a major language. ALGOL was first described in 1960, and standards activity began in 1962, under the auspices of IFIP. The ALGOL Bulletin ceased publication in 1976, so that standards effort had a life of 14 years. The Common LISP standards effort began in 1983, and appears to have ceased operations in 1994. So that effort had a lifetime of 11 years. FORTRAN and COBOL still have ongoing standards efforts, 40 years on. (COBOL is adding a "<>" operator, support for ISO 8601:2000 dates (a bit late for Y2K), and, surprisingly, method overloading.) But the rate of change is very low. The first ISO standard for ANSI C was issued in 1990, and continues, so that effort is at year 14. So, with the exception of FORTRAN and COBOL, the earliest of major languages, the active lifespan of a language standards effort seems to be in the range of 11 to 15 years. The first ISO standard for C++ was issued in 1997, so we are now at year 8 with C++. This gives us a sense of where we are in the life cycle. There's probably one more major revision cycle left in the lifespan. John Nagle Animats --- [ comp.std.c++ is moderated. To submit articles, try just posting with ] [ your news-reader. If that fails, use mailto:std-c++@ncar.ucar.edu ] [ --- Please see the FAQ before posting. --- ] [ FAQ: http://www.jamesd.demon.co.uk/csc/faq.html ]