Programming Classroom News » ISO

Book: The C# Programming Language

Joel Marcey — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:14:36 +0000

The principle designers of the C# language (Anders Hejlsberg, Mads Torgersen, Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde) have produced a third edition of their popular book, “The C# Programming Language”. Addison-Wesley, 2009, ISBN 978-0-321-56299-9.

This edition maps directly to V3 of Microsoft’s Visual C# compiler (http://www.microsoft.com/express/download/), and covers the features added in that release: query operators, compact lambda expressions, extension methods, and runtime access to expression trees.

Although V2 was standardized through Ecma (http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-334.htm) and then through ISO, the new features for V2 were simply added to the standard as separate chapters. However, the 3rd edition of the book not only contains the new V3 materials, it also integrates the V2 material into the appropriate chapters. This book is a must-have for all serious C# programmers.

Free Availability of Certain ISO/IEC Standards

Joel Marcey — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:47:08 +0000

For the most part, ISO and IEC standards are only available for purchase (from ISO and IEC directly, or via their National Body members). However, some Standards and Technical Reports, and corrections and/or amendments to these, are available for downloading free of charge from http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html.

Standardization of Ruby

Joel Marcey — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:46:13 +0000

A standard for the Ruby language and library is being drafted by the Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan (www.ipa.jp). Both English and Japanese-language versions are planned. It is expected that this specification will be adopted as a Japanese national standard by the end of 2010, and that, soon after, it will be Fast Tracked to ISO/IEC JTC 1, where it will be assigned to SC 22. The Fast-Track process takes a minimum of a year from submission to publication as an ISO/IEC standard.

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC22

Joel Marcey — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:43:10 +0000

Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 22 (abbreviated as SC 22) oversees the standards for programming languages and environments, that have been published jointly by ISO (www.iso.ch) and IEC (www.iec.ch). SC 22 meets at an annual Plenary to review the progress of its work. This year’s meeting was held in Delft, the Netherlands, on September 31 and October 1. The Chair of SC 22 is Rex Jaeschke (rex@RexJaeschke.com). Plenary attendees are delegates authorized by National Body (NB) members.
The technical work of SC 22 is done by its Working Groups (WGs), which are, as follows:

WG4 – COBOL
WG5 – Fortran
WG9 – Ada
WG11 – Binding Techniques
WG14 – C
WG16 – ISLisp
WG17 – Prolog
WG19 – Formal Specification Languages
WG21 – C++
WG23 – Programming Language Vulnerabilities

Standards developed outside SC 22, but submitted to it via some external process, and published by ISO and IEC, include the languages C#, ECMAScript, Forth, and Mumps/M, and the platforms CLI (a subset of Microsoft’s .NET), Linux Standards Base, and POSIX.