The Secret behind Bjarne and Herb’s Papers on Unified Syntax !!!

· 2 min read

A long time back, in one of my posts here1, I had discussed about Extension Methods2 … in C++; sorta! It seems that the grand daddy, Bjarne Stroustoup3, had read my post, and was impressed. So he has published a paper – Call syntax4: x.f(y) vs. f(x,y). Good thing except I don’t like the idea of assuming x.f(y) for f(x, y) while the reverse is the actual idea of extension methods. You will know when you read his paper. It seems the commander, Herb Sutter5, also was impressed with my post. Not only that he too doesn’t seem to like the x.f(y) for f(x, y) idea. Great men think alike. LOL! So he published his paper – Unified Syntax6. How is that?

Needless to say, I was completely kidding about the Herb and Bjarne about borrowing the idea of extension methods from my post. I wasn’t even born when Bjarne invented C++. The papers are deep in considering various scenarios from a language standard perspective unlike my post where I just spotted the possibility of the feature.

While C++ produces awesome languages with superior and modern syntax, constructs and concepts, it takes a long time to do that for itself. That is a sad thing! Nevertheless, I love C++ and am fortunate to have programmed in it.

  1. Extension Methods - A Polished C++ Feature ↩︎

  2. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb383977.aspx ↩︎

  3. http://www.stroustrup.com/ ↩︎

  4. http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n4174.pdf ↩︎

  5. http://herbsutter.com/ ↩︎

  6. http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2014/n4165.pdf ↩︎