From -3038390039840992200 X-Google-Thread: f78e5,6294651cbc4b105c X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news3.google.com!news.glorb.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!local01.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.speakeasy.net!news.speakeasy.net.POSTED!not-for-mail NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:50:08 -0500 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 From: "msalters" Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: C++ standard life cycle Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1124895476.862380.6040@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com User-Agent: G2/0.2 Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com; posting-host=212.123.206.71; posting-account=G8Vn6AwAAAAe3s4qFj7nFOuhEuzTNEir X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at ucar.edu X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU Approved: Fergus Henderson , moderator of comp.std.c++ X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at cs.mu.OZ.AU Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 21:43:28 CST Lines: 51 NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.182.171.162 X-Trace: sv3-FY2Lbgb4QwpQkNOWdzOva37UvjqP5SGQsrExlSizXKdpkJMEPxVVWuEWN3mo21oUeEzOcRjf9vTKi5p!R4HsqIOG0SfyAyTTlPsADC/oBGD0kURkcEHk6oD+ZcQjnpkatAcA83JXSRiIXMt0x+aVM/inihGn!eJ8VqdsiZjwtniA3qur+/dxCKE7dKM7zdLtftQ3M X-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net X-DMCA-Complaints-To: abuse@speakeasy.net X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.32 Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.std.c++:1921 John Nagle schreef: > > 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. At least. However, I'd like to suggest an explanation. The number of revisions is probably strongly related to both the number of LOCs in production use, and the rate of change. Certainly, FORTRAN and COBOL score high in the 'LOCs in production' category. Pascal most certainly doesn't. If I'd have to estimate the lifespan of C++ based on this, I'd give it at least 25 years (i.e. we'll see C++1x and C++2x too, although I do suspect these will be even more library-oriented.) Regards, Michiel Salters --- [ 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 ]