Re: Proposal

[Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.COM>]

Frank Klemm writes:

> Most programmers don't know the standard and are not interested in knowing
> the standard, because their (present) job is to solve a problem for one or
> two different systems, not for every theoretically possible system,
> and the standard supports nearly every stuff which has more than 4 pins ;-)

In my case, I have access to the standard, but its relevance to my
day-to-day work is limited, since I have to get my code past six different
implementations that all get the standard wrong.  So "is this correct ISO
C or C++" may be interesting, but "do all my targeted compilers get this
right, if not, how do I avoid a sea of #ifdefs" is more interesting.

> Programming portable, especially with C, takes much more time than
> programming for a special system, and the programmers don't have this time.

The standard does not tell one how to go about "programming portable",
because compiler vendors do not correctly implement the standard.  It
certainly helps, true, because compiler vendors have at least read the
thing and made some effort to comply, often with a long list of caveats
(especially in the case of C++).

The parts of the standard that most experienced programmers are not
familiar with tend also to be the parts of the standard that are
implemented incorrectly.