Los dictadores benevolentes del lenguaje

Quality of implementation, however, is critically important in the satisfaction enjoyed by users of the language. It is the experiential difference between writing Ruby and JavaScript. The factor that, in my view, most affects this quality of implementation is the vision of the original creator. Where the vision is maintained by a single individual, quality thrives. Where committees determine features, quality declines inexorably: Each new release saps vitality from the language even as it appears to remedy past faults or provide new, awaited capabilities.

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Benevolent dictators make decisions about the language in consultation with the community of users. They are notable for being willing to extend the spirit of the language by making hard decisions that large committees almost always eschew.

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A similar benevolent dictatorship exists with C#. The language, as I have mentioned before, is remarkably well tended by a core group in Microsoft headed by Anders Hejlsberg. (Although there is an ECMA standard for C#, Microsoft is the reference implementation, and the company decides the new features.) The result is a language widely loved by its users (Miguel de Icaza: "It's a beautiful languages that is such a pleasure to program in") and admired by others. Lua, Ruby, D, and Perl are other successful instances of this model.

Leído en Dr. Dobb's. "In Praise of Benevolent Language Dictators", de Andrew Binstock.