Is there a design rationale document?

[Jeff Dyer]

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.

Jd

> Thank you,
> 
> - David
> 
> 
> PS: Is there a list of the original committee members anywhere? I
> haven't run across that.
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