[cpp-threads] C++ committee meeting in Mont Tremblant

[Nick Maclaren]

"Herb Sutter" <hsutter at microsoft.com> wrote:
> 
> Please forgive me for being uncharacteristically frank, but I think it's
> important to say this forthrightly:

Well, in that case, please permit me the same liberty.

> These and similar statements are quite out of touch, and demonstrate a
> profound lack of understanding of the committee and its participants,
> and of how to participate constructively as a part of a group.

And I am afraid that yours show a profound lack of understanding of
the current disastrous situation in what passes for software engineering.

> The committee, like any group, have rightly ignored people who may have
> had good ideas but who have only sniped from the sidelines and weren't
> willing to put forth the time and effort to show up and participate like
> everyone else.

That attitude is one of the primary reasons that current standards
and pseudo-standards are so appalling.  It means that only people with
an axe to grind get much of a say, and militates against the generalists
who could help with ensuring that the various standards interoperate.

> The solution is simple: If it's worth it, then be willing to invest the
> time to personally attend international meetings and propose solutions,
> accept feedback and refine the proposals, and so on over a couple of
> years or more (all with no guarantee that anything will be adopted even
> after it has been refined in line with committee feedback, but that's a
> fair bar because those same rules apply to everyone). If no one is
> willing to personally invest the time it takes, usually over several
> meetings == years, to propose and refine and repropose and do the work
> to build consensus, which _everyone_ has to do, then the feature frankly
> can't be that important.

Don't be silly.  I am a generalist, and have actual implementation,
support, and usage experience in many of the interrelated areas that
are important here.  Say, perhaps 20 such major areas.

If I were to stop doing my job, I could get involved with 5-10 such
areas to the depth that you say, but they are all important and a
typical application requires half a dozen to be solved to take much
advantage of any.  Such combinations don't form nice non-overlapping
subsets, of course, and I hit a good dozen in the course of my daily
work :-(

If I were to be a specialist, I would be of no more use than all of
the other specialists around, many of whom are demonstrably clueless
about how their proposal would fit into the IT zoo - let alone on what
consequences it would have on others areas!



Regards,
Nick Maclaren,
University of Cambridge Computing Service,
New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH, England.
Email:  nmm1 at cam.ac.uk
Tel.:  +44 1223 334761    Fax:  +44 1223 334679