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  • Is there a design rationale document?

Is there a design rationale document?

# ungar at mac.com (18 years ago)

Hello all,

Thank you for adding me to this list.

I have just finished reading the language proposal spec, and was
struck by the richness of the additions to the language. I haven't
been following this effort at all; and so thank people in advance for
their patience with my ignorance. Now that I've seen the spec, there
are two more documents that would really help my understanding:

I was wondering if there exists a document that sets out the language
design goals and the connection between each feature and the goals it
supports? In my mind's eye, I picture a table of goals along one axis,
and features on the other, with entries filled in where a given
feature helps or hinders a given goal. Does this document exist? If
not, would it be helpful if it did?

Also, sometimes a feature can, in combination with some other language
feature, create undesirable interactions. Again, in my mind's eye, I
picture a table with all of the features in each axis, and the entries
describe how each pair of features either reinforce, interfere with,
or have no effect on each other. Does such a document exist? And would
it be helpful if it did?

Thank you,

  • David

PS: Is there a list of the original committee members anywhere? I
haven't run across that.

# Jeff Dyer (18 years ago)

On 11/12/07 2:17 PM, ungar at mac.com wrote:

Hello all,

Thank you for adding me to this list.

I have just finished reading the language proposal spec, and was struck by the richness of the additions to the language. I haven't been following this effort at all; and so thank people in advance for their patience with my ignorance. Now that I've seen the spec, there are two more documents that would really help my understanding:

I'm guessing you've read the overview whitepaper. No official spec exists yet.

I was wondering if there exists a document that sets out the language design goals and the connection between each feature and the goals it supports? In my mind's eye, I picture a table of goals along one axis, and features on the other, with entries filled in where a given feature helps or hinders a given goal. Does this document exist? If not, would it be helpful if it did?

Such a document doesn't exist. I have been thinking that something like this should be written to help people understand how the individual features fit together to make the whole language work.

I'll take a crack at this.

Also, sometimes a feature can, in combination with some other language feature, create undesirable interactions. Again, in my mind's eye, I picture a table with all of the features in each axis, and the entries describe how each pair of features either reinforce, interfere with, or have no effect on each other. Does such a document exist? And would it be helpful if it did?

Good idea too.

The reference implementation is a kind of empirical version of this. But I agree, an abstract presentation would give a nice overview of what we, as the designers, believe to be true about the feature interactions.

# ungar at mac.com (18 years ago)

Many thanks. If there is any way I can be of any help, please don't
hesitate to ask. I would be delighted.