From -3015562063631904371 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,9a6b7da9ba54eaea X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-07-07 16:19:49 PST Path: gmd.de!newsserver.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uwm.edu!ogicse!netnews.nwnet.net!news.u.washington.edu!hardy.u.washington.edu!rons From: rons@hardy.u.washington.edu (Ronald Schoenberg) Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Subject: Re: C++ Language Extensions Message-ID: <21flho$mg@news.u.washington.edu> Date: 7 Jul 93 23:17:12 GMT Article-I.D.: news.21flho$mg References: <25939@alice.att.com> Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 44 NNTP-Posting-Host: hardy.u.washington.edu In article schouten@sp95.csrd.uiuc.edu writes: >In article <25953@alice.att.com> ark@alice.att.com (Andrew Koenig) writes: > >>I understand that there are some people who just want an exponentiation >>operator and don't care what results it gives, but I don't think there >>are enough of those to form a consensus in the committee. >... >>So far, no one has come up with even one possibility that enough >>people on the committee like to be willing to approve it. > >So the real problem has nothing to do with numerical issues or >character availability or whether the moon is made of green cheese. >It is simply that there are not enough people on the committee that >want an exponentiation operator. We could have saved a lot of >time and frustration if you'd just admitted that from the start. > [..elided material..] > >Dale Schouten >schouten@uiuc.edu I can live without an exponentiation operator, but the attitude expressed above does bother me because of the lack of respect it shows for numerics programming. I don't think that a standards committee should give in to every special interest. On the other hand, the numerics programming community shouldn't be treated as just another special interest. In my opinion C++ is the best chance numerics programmers have for breaking away from Fortran and into a language with widespread support and full features. C is certainly not that language and I'm not for any change there. But the C++ standards committees would do well, I believe, to pay some attention to features of interest to numerics programmers. There aren't so many numerics programmers doing C++ right now and they are therefore under-represented on standards committees. That will change, however, if the members of those committees will give them some respect. There is much to be gained by designing and supporting a C++ that serves both the numerics and general programming communities. And there is little to be gained by the non-numerics programmers from continuing to isolate and alienate numerics programmers. -- Ronald Schoenberg fax: 206-727-6521 University of Washington email: rons@u.washington.edu