From Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de Tue Oct 26 16:09:45 1993 Received: from cd1.lrz-muenchen.de by dkuug.dk with SMTP id AA28474 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4j for ); Tue, 26 Oct 1993 16:09:45 +0100 Received: by cd1.lrz-muenchen.de; Tue, 26 Oct 93 16:10:29 +0100 X400-Trace: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; arrival 26 Oct 93 14:09:43 Z action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZCD1; arrival 26 Oct 93 16:10:21 +0100 action Relayed X400-Internal-Trace: MTALRZVEE; arrival 26 Oct 93 14:09:48 Z action Relayed P1-Message-Id: de*d400*lrz-muenchen; 931026160510973-MTALRZVEE Ua-Content-Id: 931026160510973- Original-Encoded-Information-Types: IA5-Text Message-Id: <931026160510973-MTALRZVEE*Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz.lrz-muenchen.d400.de> Date: 26 Oct 93 14:09:43 Z From: Mok-Kong.Shen@lrz-muenchen.de To: SC22WG5@dkuug.dk Subject: RE: Progressive vs. Conservative X-Charset: ASCII X-Char-Esc: 29 Dear WG5 Members, in (448) I responded to Mr. Cohen's posting (447). Subsequently Mrs. Martin called my attention to the stategic plans which are new when compared to the processing of 8x. I didn't understand the phrase 'our new way of working' essentially because of my failure to discern novelties in the ways matters get processed now as compared to, say, 10 years ago. Decisions have mostly to wait till the yearly meetings which part of the members are unable to attend regularly for lack of time and money. Then under the huge work load one rushes through the five days, scarcely having opportunities to exchange opinions in depth and at length with those who are fortunate enough to be able to come. As X3J3 does much of the hard work that WG5 evaluates only at a later time point from a not necessarily very conforming point of view, much time is spent that possibly could have been saved if there were more intimate cooperation of work and more fluid information exchanges between the two groups and their members. Of course lots of things are done at the meetings. Nevertheless the question may be asked whether it is not possible to achieve more or do the same better/faster with the same amount of man power, time and financial resources that are spent during as well as outside of the meetings. I asked myself this question more than 10 years ago and continue to do so today. It maybe that my failure to discern novelties is partly the result a certain bias towards the past (some people use to say "In the good old days ....."). I don't know. But this explains at least in part why I at once became (and am still) sympathetic to the critiques of Mr. Leonard in (429) which I take the liberty to cite once again for those who don't keep old mails: 'And all Fortran 90 did was translate (mostly) long-known programming concepts into a different language, and look how many mistakes were made and how long it took to do it!' As a consequence I suggested in (441) a possibly simply implementable way of enhancing the processing speed. Prior to that I also proposed a quick consolidaton of opinions of WG5 on the BSI paper for input to X3J3 in order to reduce the probability that X3J3 happens to come up with results that WG5 subsequently finds to be hardly acceptable, thereby incurring at least one more cycle of processing. Guessing that the lack of response to Mr. Leonard's critiques above means no objection from all, I proposed to discuss the fundamental issue of processing speed. (Note that this is an issue that is essentially independent of the contents of the stategic plans. If, by improving the efficiency, we are timely ahead of the schedule, we could even pause for a while.) This led to Mr. Cohen's contribution (447). If we determine that we are really progressing sufficiently fast and in efficient ways then someone of us should rebut Mr. Leonard's critiques above. Doing nothing and simply letting these sit there (so to say), is obviously highly undesirable. On the other hand, if we find that something could/should be done to improve our processing speed/efficiency, then we should start discussing how to achieve them. In short, we should break our silence to Mr. Leonard's critiques. In a certain sense, Mr. Leonard's critiques, if they were silently accepted, would in my opinion considerably augment the weight of the critiques of Mr. Hunter (444), despite the fact that Dr. Schonfelder has responded to these in some length in (445). (Of couse, some facts presented in (444) do not concern Fortran and as such have no immediate relations to us.) Mr. Cohen deduced that I am unhappy with the decisions we have made. Surely I am not happy with all the decisions. But who is happy with everything? Is it of any significance that a single individual of the group is unhappy? The majority must be happy. (In the old old days the reverse was true.) Further, for Mr. Cohen, 'consensus decisions' and 'majority rules' appear to be concepts that belong to two mutually incompatible categories. I am afraid I have gravely erred. But aren't consensus decisions achieved through majority rules? After all, why do we count the informal letter bellots or the raised hands at WG5 meetings? There is an Asian proverb saying that earnest words are not pleasant to the ears. I like to stress in closing that, no matter whether the critiques of Mr. Leonard and Mr. Hunter are justified or not, these are ample causes for us to reflect very carefully on the quality of the services we are offering to the Fortran community, which consists of the real users of the language, working in industry, in commerce, or in academic institutions. (We ourselves and the vendors should, I believe, be excluded in this context.) I expect and sincerely solicitate rebuttals/comments on the points I made above. Best regards, M. K. Shen