Re: Clause 10, Expression Evaluation

[Jason Riedy <ejr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

And Guillaume Melquiond writes:
> In some languages, they are called polymorphic functions.

And Malcolm Cohen writes:
> Bah humbug.  Not in any sensible language they're not.

And that example demonstrates one reason why I stopped working on
this.

There are too many vocal camps that swear their terminology is
the *only* reasonable one.  There's no way a standard will be
accepted if it chooses one of the terminologies over the others
or even if it invents its own.  And then convincing all the
hardware people to think of providing tools for languages/users
rather than providing "an implementation" that ends their
responsibility ain't easy.

The language interface needs to be at the level of formal
semantics.  Getting that provably correct, clearly expressed, and
widely acceptable requires more time than is (or was) available.
It's all possible, and many parts are "too easy" to be considered
research from the language side.

It's not time yet to standardize the language interface, alas.
A little more research&implementation, then the hard part:
political buy-in from some well-respected folks in language and
hardware communities.

Jason