(j3.2006) (SC22WG5.5755) RE: Units of measure

[Van Snyder]

On Wed, 2016-07-06 at 16:35 +0000, Lionel, Steve wrote:
> I didn't like the particular proposal, that it felt "too F77-like" and
> I didn't think it would solve the stated problem, but I don't remember
> details. 

In 2004, there were two who didn't like the proposal, eight who liked
it, and three who loved it.  Nobody said then why they didn't like it,
and other than the vague "too F77 like" nobody has yet offered a reason
for not liking it.  It's difficult to revise a proposal to answer
objections that nobody will reveal.  That was supposed to be the purpose
of N2112, but it's quite vague also.

Even though the sentiment was 11-2 favorable, somehow it got assessed to
be as big a project as coarrays, even though essentially no code
generation is involved, and what little is required is trivial.  It
could be done by the front end, by the equivalent of inlining trivial
one-line functions, long before the real code generator gets involved.

I'm curious what's "F77 like" about an attribute for a real variable.

It was designed explicitly to solve the stated problem, so I'm curious
to know why it wouldn't.

The TS proposal, with all its details, is online.  It contains 14 pages
of editorial changes.  The TS on ADDITIONAL features for coarrays
contained 23 pages of editorial changes.  The TS on ADDITIONAL features
for C interoperability contained 21 pages of editorial changes.

If your organization had lost $300 million due to a trivial software
mistake that the programming language and its runtime could have caught
or corrected automatically, would you roll over and play dead?  If you
wasted two work weeks per year chasing problems that the programming
language and its runtime could have caught or corrected automatically,
would you roll over and play dead?