Re: "A diagram of C23 basic types"

On 20.07.2025 08:58, Richard Heathfield wrote:

On 20/07/2025 01:16, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jul 2025 03:55:14 +0100, Richard Heathfield wrote:

[...]

>
You sound as though you don’t want languages copying ideas from each
other.

Hmm.. - this is an interesting thought. In an instant reflex I'd agree
with the advantage of picking "good" ideas from other languages. Upon
reconsideration I have some doubts though; not only because some ideas
may fit in a language but others not really. To me many language give
the impression to have been patched-up instead of being well designed
from scratch. Either evolving by featuritis of "good ideas" or needing
changes to address inherent shortcomings of the basic language design.

[...]
There's nothing wrong with new languages pinching ideas from old
languages - that's creativity and progress, especially when those ideas
are combined in new and interesting ways, and you can keep on adding
those ideas right up until your second reference implementation goes
public.
 
But going the other way turns a programming language into a constantly
moving target that it's impossible for more than a handful of people to
master - the handful in question being those who decide what's in and
what's out. This is bad for programmers' expertise and bad for the
industry.

Incompatibilities or change of semantics between versions would be bad!
For coherently designed and consistently enhanced languages that might
be less a problem. Having a well designed "Common Language Base" would
not impose too much effort to master [coherently matching] extensions.
Of course here we are speaking (only) about "C", specifically, so the
basic language preconditions are set (and its decades long evolution
path clearly visible).

Janis