[Haskell-cafe] Updating the Haskell Standard

[Fergus Henderson]

On 20-Jul-2005, David Barton <dlb at patriot.net> wrote:
> I can contribute some experience from commercial standardization efforts. 
> ANSI, IEEE, and ISO standards require re-ballotting every five years, 
> otherwise the standards lapse.  Reballotting may or may not be accompanied 
> by changes in the standard; for a standard as complex as a language, new 
> versions at least every five years seems to be fairly common with "newer" 
> standards [...] Five years is 
> what the general industry seems to have settled on as a good average, but 
> it may or may not apply here; the circumstances are different.

ANSI/ISO programming language standards typically undergo major updates
every 10 years or so: Fortran 66, 77, 95, 2003; COBOL 68, 74, 85, 2002;
Ada 83, 95, 2005; C 89, 99; C++ 98, 200x (for some x >= 5).

> (ANSI C has not changed in newer standardization ballots as far 
> as I know).

A major new update to the ANSI/ISO C standard was issued in 1999.

-- 
Fergus J. Henderson                 |  "I have always known that the pursuit
Galois Connections, Inc.            |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
Phone: +1 503 626 6616              |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.