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Also ECMA (C# and JavaScr... er, ECMAScript) which provides standards at no cost vs ANSI (no notable language specs since C and Pascal) which charges a fee.


Last year I finished the school year early because of the coronavirus lockdown and had too much free time - so I wrote an interpreter for CLR bytecode (https://github.com/Leowbattle/clr_lite). The ECMA-335 standard contained everything I needed to know for that project: documentation of the EXE format, VM instructions, etc.

I learned a lot doing this project, and I would never have been able to do it without free access to the standard. So I think Tim is right to recognise the value open standards provide to hobbyist programmers.


> ECMAScript

ECMAScript is nowadays amusing because the ISO standard for it is literally a single page document… that normatively references the ECMA published document.


Apparently 3 pages. AND STILL COSTS 38 CHF ($40 USD)! https://www.iso.org/standard/73002.html


I mean, you can download the PDF version for free here: https://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c0...


ANSI for languages now operates under the aegis of ISO. For the C and C++ languages, ANSI is one of the voting member bodies.


I think "ECMA C#" lags behind C# as implemented in .NET, but still.




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