Subject: Re: STL efficiency (Was: Re: C++ briar patch (Was: Object IDs are bad))
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/05/27
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.functional,comp.lang.c++
Message-ID: <3073702480536970@naggum.no>


* Max Moroz -> Richard A. O'Keefe
| Well, why do you work from a Draft Standard?  You can refer to it in
| cases of ambiguity about what is considered portable, and what is not.
| In you normal work, however, you should use the documentation provided by
| the vendor who supplied your library/compiler/etc (unless the vendor
| guarantees full compliance with the standard, which no current compiler
| does).

I can't speak for Richard, but I prefer to write my software in a language,
not a particular product.  I strongly prefer knowing how things should
work, what constructs should mean, etc, and then augment this by a list of
implementation restrictions, bugs, and other deviations.  plus a full
specification of the (inevitable) implementation-defined features.  if this
is impossible for some given language and one is expected to keep up with
an increasingly erratic set of random features, I consider it a waste of my
time to learn to use just a (buggy) product, except in some very special
cases (like Emacs and experimental languages).

#\Erik
-- 
if we work harder, will obsolescence be farther ahead or closer?