Standardized Programming Languages

Question

Is there an organization similar to W3C that creates standards for programming languages?

If so, are there any programming languages, like browsers would using W3C standards, that implement these standards?

I have done my own research and I have been unsuccessful thus far hence the question. The answers and most of the comments so far are very useful but essentially I'm looking for a language or list of languages that have an open and reliable licensing system.

I think W3C has been the most successful at this up until now with HTML so I am looking for a language that has a similar licensing structure. Java has certain specifications like the EE servlet specification which has providers like Tomcat implement it but then at the end of the day that is still an Oracle owned standard isn't it?

Answer 1

It’s questionable whether there is any other organization similar to the W3C; it really depends on your definition for similarity.

There are standards organizations in the strict sense (W3C is not a standards organization but an industry consortium) that define standards for programming languages, most importantly ISO, working together with the IEC in this area. They have a joint technical group, which has subcommittee SC 22 for “programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces”, which has created several standards.

There are other players in the field, too, like the ECMA association, which works on a few languages, such as JavaScript, which they call ECMAScript.

There are also many languages that have not been standardized, so that the closest equivalent to a standard is a vendor’s or language designer’s description or manual.

Answer 2

There are no standards organizations specifically for programming languages.

ANSI (American National Standards Institute), ISO (International Standards Organization)(I think) exist to write standards. When someone wants to put a standard together for something, they put a pitch together and present it to the organization. If the organization agrees that it is time, they will help run the standard-writing and balloting process.

ANSI standards exist for FORTRAN and Ada. The Ada standard is unusual in that it is a joint standard, with identical standard number, between ANSI and the US Department of Defense (ANSI/MIL-STD-1815A, if memory serves me). Ada started as a DoD effort, and a decision was made to pursue ANSI standardization as well, to gain wider exposure for the language. (This was successful, to a degree. Ada is heavily used in commercial, non-military work, in Europe.)

ANSI and ISO standards exist for PASCAL. They define different, slightly incompatible languages. I don't recall the details now.

C++ is covered by an ANSI standard. Something similar almost happened for C++. During the ANSI effort, the European contingent tipped their hand that they were planning on making the ISO standard different, because of some issues that they felt the ANSI committee was not addressing adequately. To their credit, the ANSI C++ committee, after saying "Say WHAT!?", backed up and addressed the issues.

There is an ANSI standard for FORTH.

ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) has also done a few standards for languages.

Answer 3

It's very unclear to me what you mean with "standards", but there is for example the Java Language Specification which determines how a JVM should work and thus provides a guideline for people that want to write their own JVM implementation.