From psmith@mozart.convex.com Tue Mar 17 16:32:56 1992
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Date: Tue, 17 Mar 92 09:32:37 -0600
From: psmith@mozart.convex.com (Presley Smith)
Message-Id: <9203171532.AA18835@mozart.convex.com>
To: meissner@lynx.cs.usfca.edu, sc22wg5@dkuug.dk
Subject: Re:  (SC22WG5.56) ADT proposal re WG5/L12
Cc: psmith@mozart.convex.com
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The world has become more complex just as the standards have become more
complex.  When there were thousands of lines of FORTRAN in the world, then you
could change the language at will and the earlier adopters would change
with you.  

When there's BILLIONS of lines of FORTRAN in the world, people don't want to
change all that code just because it wasn't perfect the first time and some
want to change it to make it more perfect, but different.

If you want to create a new language to fix the sins of FORTRAN past, then
start with a new slate. 

The "procedures" have not failed you.  Even the IEEE committee could not
go back now and make radical changes to the POSIX standards at will without
being upward compatibile because of the investment people have made in that
standard. 

The current FORTRAN has been TOO SUCCESSFUL for a bunch of techies to hack
on it at will...   Companies have invested BILLIONS of dollars in FORTRAN
applications and they want to maintain that investment and not have to 
invest again.   

The main "procedures" of the ANSI and X3 process have NOT changed since long
before the FORTRAN 77 standard was done.  This bull of the "politically
oriented forces" is just that.  This message is a bunch of sour grapes... 

Grow up Loren. 

Enough said.  Presley