Re: Proposal for variadic functions

I think it is better for any language to have a bigger domain than than the majority of its users: the alternative is a language that isn't meeting the (evolving) needs of its community.


I don't think that the bias that Mike identifies is necessarily a problem unless the desires of the participants actively diverge from those of the majority, rather than simply encompassing and extending them.

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Tomos Hillman
eXpertML Ltd
+44 7793 242058
On 8 Dec 2020, 11:14 +0000, Michael Kay <mike@saxonica.com>, wrote:
> >
> > How far do you want to go with pleasing a minority of users?
> >
>
> I'm afraid that standards work, however formal or informally conducted, tends in the direction of pleasing the participants in the specification effort, who may or may not be representative of the real user community. It's very hard to avoid this bias. Accepting a proposal from some of the participants, if they demand it energetically enough, is always easier than rejecting such a demand; that's the dynamics of how committee-based specification works. Allowing a language to grow is always easier than keeping it small. I'm all too aware of this problem, but I don't have an answer to it.
>
> Michael Kay
> Saxonica
>