>I can imagine the meetings of that committee <g>, which is not to say that it wouldn't be a good and even workable idea, as long as the discussions don't get too "academic" and stay close to the needs at the grassroots. Organizing and keeping something like this going is pretty hard, I would imagine, but some of the open source efforts have actually done pretty well, Python being one of them. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Did you read my signatures? Let's develop superb standards that will end the holy wars.

It sure would give heated debates. <g>

VFP is regarded by many here as special and that may well be the result of the fact that it was constructed by individuals rather then by committee members who had to reach consensus. Those individuals had more degrees of freedom to realize their 'dreamed of' constructs. It must have been quite satisfying to work on the development of the language. There must have been many moments that guys like Ken, Aleksey and others have experienced 'the flow'.

The downside of all that may well be that they not only implemented beautiful constructs, but also horrible ones, as there were less committee members who said in time "Hey stop! That's killing the language!". If this is true, then it won't be easy to get it approved as one more official public language. And ETec's job will go well up to a certain level only. Up to 80 percent maybe.