The Shape of Code

The Fortran language standards committee, SC22/WG5, has an unusual situation on its hands. Two people have put themselves forward to chair the committee, when the current chairman’s three year term ends. What is unusual is that it is often difficult to find anybody willing to do the job.

The two candidates are the outgoing chair (the person who invariably does the job, until they decide they have had enough, or can arm wrestle someone else to do it), and a scientist at Los Alamos; I don’t know either person.

SC22 (the ISO committee responsible for language standards), and INCITS (the US Standards body; the US is the Fortran committee secretariate) will work something out.

I had heard that the new guy was ruffling some feathers, and I thought good for him (committees could do with having their feathers ruffled every now and again). Then I read the running for convenor announcement; oh dear. Every committee has a way of working: the objectives listed in this announcement would go down really well with the C++ committee (which already does many of the points listed), but the Fortran committee don’t operate this way.

The language standards world appears to be very similar to the open source world, in that they are both driven by the people who do the work. One person can have a big impact in the open source world, simply by doing the work, but in the language standards world there is voting (people can vote in the open source world by using software or not). One person can write papers and propose lots of additions to a standard, but the agreement of committee members is needed before any wording is added to a draft standard, which eventually goes out for a round of voting by national bodies.

Over the years I have seen several people on a standards committee starting out very enthusiastic, writing proposals and expounding them at meetings; then after a year or two becoming despondent because nothing has happened. If committee members don’t like your proposal (or choose to spend their time on other proposals), they do nothing. A majority doing nothing is enough to stop something happening.

Once a language has become established, many of its users want the committee to move slowly. Compiler vendors don’t want to spend all their time keeping up with language updates (which rarely help sell more product), and commercial users don’t want the hassle of having to spend time working out how a new standard might impact them (having zero impact on existing is a common aim of language committees).

The young, the enthusiastic, and magazines looking to sell clicks are excited by change. An ISO language committee is generally not the place to find it.

Update

INCITS have nominated the current chair for the next three-year term.