On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:07:17 +0000, exarkun wrote: >>> Personally, I consider Python to be a good language held back by >>>too-close ties to a naive interpreter implementation and the lack >>>of a formal standard for the language. >> >>Name one language under active development that has not been harmed by a >>formal standard. (I think C doesn't count -- there was relatively little >>development of C after the standards process started.) > > I think you must mean "harmed by a formal standard more than it has been > helped", since that's clearly the interesting thing. > > And it's a pretty difficult question to answer. How do you quantify the > harm done to a language by a standarization process? How do you > quantify the help? These are extremely difficult things to measure > objectively.
For a start, you have to decide how to weight the different groups of users. For an application which is designed for end users and will be in a permanent state of flux, dealing with revisions to the language or its standard libraries are likely to be a small part of the ongoing development effort. For libraries or middleware which need to maintain a stable interface, or for code which needs extensive testing, documentation, audits, etc, even a minor update can incur significant costs. Users in the latter group will prefer languages with a stable and rigorous specification, and will tend to view any flexibility granted to the language implementors as an inconvenience. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
