In my role as convener of the ISO C++ committee, I get to field a number of questions about the committee and its process. It occurred to me that some of them might be of more general interest, so I’ll occasionally publish an edited version of my reply here in case other people have similar questions. Note that the quoted questions may be paraphrased.

Today’s question comes from someone who recently asked about why, if ISO C++ is an open standard, ISO charges for it and we can’t just download it for free.

The short answer is that people sometimes confuse “open” with “free.” ISO standards aren’t “open” like the O in FOSS, they’re “open” like “not developed behind closed doors.” Anyone who wants to pay for membership in their national body (if their country participates in ISO and in the specific project in question) is able to come join the fun. In free-as-in-beer terms, this means that experts are welcome to come to the ISO brewery at their own expense and volunteer their time to help brew the beer, and then when the beer is ready the customers still pay ISO to drink it (the helpers don’t get a cut of that, only a free bottle for their personal use and the satisfaction of having brewed a mighty fine keg).

Longer answer follows:

ISO C++ claims to be an OPEN STANDARD. Where can I download the OPEN STANDARD for ISO C++.

All published ISO standards are available for sale from the ISO store, via http://iso.org. You can purchase a copy of the latest currently published C++ standard, 14882:2003, here for CHF 380:

• http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38110

Also, your national standards body may sell a copy. For example, the ANSI store sells a PDF version here for US$ 30:

• http://webstore.ansi.org/RecordDetail.aspx?sku=INCITS%2FISO%2FIEC+14882-2003

However, before you buy one of those, note that we’ve been actively working on a new revision to that standard, and hope to be done in the next year or so. You can get a free copy of the latest (but incomplete) draft of the C++ standard here:

• http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2010/n3035.pdf

Note that this is a working draft as of a couple of weeks ago; it is not the standard currently in force, and it is not exactly the standard that will be published in the next year or two, but it is a draft of the latter that’s in pretty good shape but will still get some editorial corrections and technical tweaks.

By the way, what does it mean, that the STANDARD of a widely used language is OPEN? Especially if I have to pay for it?

All ISO standards are "open standards" in that they’re developed in an open, inclusive process. All member nations of ISO are eligible to participate, send experts, contribute material, vote on ballots, and so forth. Additionally, some working groups, including C and C++, make all of their papers and all working drafts freely available on the web, as with the link above; the only thing a working group is not allowed to make freely available, except with special permission from ISO, is the text of the final standard it produces, because ISO reserves the right to charge for that.

Could you explain to me, what should it mean if the STANDARD of a widely used language was CLOSED?

Generally, that means it was developed privately by some closed industry group or consortium that not everyone is allowed to join and participate in. Some standards are developed behind closed doors controlled by some company or companies. ISO standards are not like that.

Best wishes,

Herb

Recommended reading (it’s short), from the January 2010 issue of CACM:

What Should We Teach New Software Developers? Why?
by Bjarne Stroustrup

It’s a wonderfully accurate and concise summary of the disconnect between the ivory tower and the trenches – i.e., (some) computer science academics and (some) software development industry managers, with commentary on other topics like why or why not to regulate the software development industry.

My favorite part is this from the conclusion (emphasis added):

We must do better. Until we do, our infrastructure will continue to creak, bloat, and soak up resources. Eventually, some part will break in some unpredictable and disastrous way (think of Internet routing, online banking, electronic voting, and control of the electric power grid). …

Bjarne isn’t prone to disaster warnings (indeed, this is the first time I recall seeing a comment like this from him, even over a beer or three), but he’s right. This hits directly on an issue I’ve also been giving thought to in recent years: As an industry and a society, we routinely underestimate the degree to which we’ve gradually allowed our automated civilization to become reliant on computers and software, and vulnerable as a result. We’ve been satisfied with making any given system “reliable enough” for the intended application (e.g., having a much higher bar for life-critical software than for a word processor), and so far we’ve been able to get away with that without the level of broad regulation for software development that is routinely required for other disciplines like engineering that are involved in providing essential products and services. Of course, as Bjarne points out, one reason for the lack of regulation of the software development industry is that we don’t know (and/or can’t agree on) exactly what to require and how to measure it; we’re just not as mature a field yet as civil or mechanical engineering.

Recognizing the potential scope of a catastrophic and systemic software failure in the field – one that disables a vital piece of infrastructure (say, electric power or food distribution, country-wide for a month) and that can’t be patched with a remote update – adds impetus to understanding and solving the kinds of issues Bjarne writes about.

This morning my colleague Rob Hanz wrote an interesting email that went viral in my corner of Microsoft. He graciously allowed me to share it with you here. I hope you enjoy it too.

Blink and subconscious messaging
Robert Hanz

I was reading Blink last night, and one of the things it mentioned is how subconscious signals can significantly impact conscious activity. For instance, one experiment took jumbled, semi-random words and had the subjects arrange them into sentences. After they finished these, they would need to go down to the hall and speak to a person at an office to sign out of the test.

But the test wasn’t the actual sentences – mixed in with the words to form sentences were one of two sets of words. One set had a lot of words regarding patience and cooperation, while the other had words regarding belligerence and impatience. The test was to see the behavior of the student when the person they needed to talk to was engaged in a conversation and was unable to help them.

The group that had the belligerent words waited, on average, about 5 minutes before interrupting the conversation. The group with the patient wordset waited indefinitely. The test was designed to end after I believe 10 minutes of waiting – not a single “patient” subject ever interrupted the conversation.

Reading this, one of the things that came to mind was some of the different messaging used by waterfall projects vs. agile projects, and how often we hear them.

Waterfall:
“Bug” (used for just about anything that needs to be done by a developer)
“Priority one”
“Due by”
“Stabilization”
(this in addition to the frequently long list of “bugs” that confronts developers every day)

Agile:
“User story”
“Customer value”
“Velocity”
(in addition, the list of work to be done is usually scoped to be possible within a single week)

When I thought about the differences in words, I was really struck by how different the messaging was. In the waterfall case, the message was overwhelmingly negative – it focused on failures, urgency, and almost a sense of distrust. It seemed that the language seemed to be geared around ways that individuals messed up, and how everything is an emergency that must be dealt with immediately. And, if you think about it, in a waterfall culture there is typically no frequent reward or messaging of success – the best you can typically hope for (for much of the cycle) is to avoid failure. And the idea that you’re actually producing value is very much removed from the language.

On the other hand, the agile language itself focuses on results, not failures. Stories are typically “done” or “not done,” and while bugs are certainly tracked, at a high level that’s usually just a statement that the story is “not done.” Combine this with sprint reviews (where the team shows what they’ve accomplished), and the overall message becomes very much focused on the successes of the team, rather than the failures. Progress is measured by value added, not by failures avoided. Even something as low-level as TDD consistently gives its practitioners a frequent message of success with the “green bar.”

While I certainly believe that agile development has many advantages in terms of reducing iteration time and tightening feedback loops, among other things, is it possible that something as simple as the shift in language is also a significant part of the effectiveness? That by priming individuals with messages of success and value, rather than messages of failure, that morale and productivity can be boosted?

The ISO C++ committee met in Santa Cruz, CA, USA on October 19-24. You can find the minutes here, which include the votes at the whole-group sessions but not the details of the breakout technical sessions where we spend most of the week.

The good news is that there’s little new technical news. We did a lot of work during the week, but it was mostly working on refining the standard, deciding integration questions of how two language features should work together in cases not clearly described, fixing bugs, and answering national body comments on our first public draft last fall (those are now nearly all answered). We expect to produce another public draft at our next meeting in March.

We did vote in one small feature that I and Lawrence Crowl in particular had been working on: a simple async() facility to launch asynchronous work easily without messing with packaged_tasks and raw threads. Here’s a sample use, also demonstrating a simple use of the futures library and a lambda function for kicks:

  future f = std::async( []{ OtherWork(); } );

  //... do our own work concurrently with OtherWork ...

  OkayNowWeNeedTheResult( f.get() );  // blocks if necessary until f is ready

If you’ve been following the futures library, you’ll notice a name change above: We also renamed unique_future<T> to just plain future<T> as part of recasting the futures wording to make it clearer and more consistent. That’s an example of the kind of cleanup work being done.

Near the end of the meeting, we also discussed deprecating export (as I reported earlier) and exception specifications other than throw()-nothing. There seemed to be significant support for deprecating both, and so we’ll probably see a concrete proposal at our next meeting.

In sad news, the convener (chair) of the committee for the past year, P.J. Plauger, stepped down at the end of the meeting. After I had been the convener for two three-year terms from 2002 to 2008, I decided it was time for someone else to have a go and so Plauger replaced me a year ago. He has done a really great job over the past year and his contributions in that role will be missed, but we won’t lose his services entirely as he remains an active participant in the committee. I will probably volunteer again to replace him.

That’s pretty much it. The next meeting of the ISO C++ standards committee is in March:

• March 8-13, 2010: Pittsburgh, PA, USA

(Edited to fix “2009” in the title and add a link to the Pittsburgh meeting invitation.)