DEFUN&-CHECK-ARGS putting out a ARGS request

[Glenn S. Burke <GSB at MIT-ML>]

    Date: 30 JAN 1981 1737-EST
    From: JONL at MIT-MC (Jon L White)

        Date: 30 January 1981 17:03-EST
        From: Glenn S. Burke <GSB at MIT-ML>
        .  .  .  i said that i fixed
        it, since it didn't look like it would get fixed any other way.
    So why all the flaming?
Yes, why?
        ...  i thought it
        dumb and inconsistent that the ARGS info should be put out ONLY if i
        set DEFUN&-CHECK-ARGS to NIL.  I feel that it should ALWAYS be output.
        The argument about not doing it because of purification does NOT hold
        up in most cases, because most people don't have such symbols already
        extant in a pure dump (eg TO-STRING in the base Lisp).
    So why didn't you do that too?   I don't have any case against doing the 
    call to ARGS when DEFUN-&CHECK-ARGS is ().  In fact, why not let 
    DEFUN-&CHECK-ARGS = () be the default state, so that a loser has to reset 
    it if he wants the explicit args checking code in his function.
Again why?  Because this opinion is not the one expressed in the original
message.  It is not an opinion expressed by the implementation of the
code.  I think it is fairly normal for one to infer some justification
for default settings of flags and default behaviour of code controlled
by those flags.  I don't make it a practice to go changing the functionality
of things (even if it is only the default value of flags) when it is
something which might be noticed by others, as that can be a severe
inconvenience to them even if it is something they can trivially
compensate for.  I tend to make the assumption (which it appears
is frequently unjustified) that there is Good Reason for things to
be The Way They Are.  So when i get spurious babblings i tend to take
offense.
If i were to make a practice of changing functionality of things when
they didn't suit me i might not be able to stop, given the current
state of things.