Standardization

Standardization is good. Standardization is a great tool to speed up development of new technologies and speeding up improvement of current technologies. So standardization should be stimulated and therefore standards should be available and accessible easily by engineers, students and others.

If standards are so important for technological progress, why on earth do I have to pay so much money for them? Take for example the ANSI C standard, ISO/IEC 9899, it's a must have for every C programmer and quite expensive. And in development, it's not the only standard required.

Is it really neccesary? It's the programming equilivent of legalese, so painful to actually get anything from it. Surely it's neccesary if you are writing a compiler... but how much advantage does it really have being a programmer? Practically, no compiler is 100% compliant, so you really need to compile the code to see if its valid anyway. If you want portable code, compile with multiple compilers from the start, and turn warnings levels all the way up.

I agree that no compiler is 100% ANSI compliant, but I don't agree that you need to compile. Assuming that a C compiler supports at least ANSI C, I know there are compilers who don't, you don't need to compile to see if it is valid. You need to know what's in the ANSI C standard and then you can check if your code is ANSI C compliant.

>but how much advantage does it really have being a >programmer?

When writing software for applications in audio, telecom and many other industries, standards are really necessary. When writing software for a MPEG codec, you need to know it's specifications. When writing software for mobile phones, you need to know about the standards which are used. And there are many more examples of cases in which you need standards.

A large company can pay it. But small companies have less budget. And what about a hobbyist who wants to write some software at home?

I meant what is the usefullness of having the standard at your desktop when programming... not what is the use of having standards.

>I meant what is the usefullness of having the standard at your >desktop when programming... not what is the use of having >standards.

Using it as a reference. When creating an application which for example deals with a datacommunication standard like CAN or USB, it is very useful to have that standard on your desktop. I find it very useful to have those documents close to me when developing.

>Hobbyist probbly don't have a use for having a copy of the
>stanareds and small company might need a single copy. ( or
>two)

Yes, I agree that a small company might need just few copies. But there sure are hobbyists who would like to have standards. If you're creating an MPEG decoder at home or you're creating a driver or application for your BlueTooth device, then you may need such a standard.

I don't understand why we have to pay for standards.