[no subject]

[David L. Andre <DLA at MIT-AI>]

Okay, I was wrong.
I had thought that VIEW-DIRECTORY and friends required
:DIRECTORY-LIST-STREAM.  However, this is totally the wrong way to
implement new features.  Either it should be "installed" and
"advertised" as an entry point, or it should not exist.  It would be
fairly easy to write :DIRECTORY-LIST-STREAM to default to using
:DIRECTORY-LIST, which I believe is the right thing, should it be
implemented.  A DIRECTORY-STREAM mixin would define :DIRECTORY-LIST and
:DIRECTORY-LIST-STREAM in terms of :DIRECTORY-STREAM.  However, going
around and making random source file optimizations for your code without
consultation is unacceptable.  Maybe somebody else would have had a
better idea.  Maybe they would all agree that there should be an
advertised entry point.  But the lisp machine is hardly the place for
obscure features throughout the software (I know, I know, I'm living in
never-never land).

    I accept that I will have to fix bugs introduced by others that
    first manifest themselves in interaction with correct code that I
    write, because I can't see how this could possibly be prevented.
Yes, but it CAN be minimized.  I of course have had run-ins with other
people.  I expect they have had run-ins with me.  However I have had
many more run-ins with you than anybody else.  Something's wrong.

    Also, the fact that I tend to give compatibility less priority and
    improvement more priority than perhaps you do, makes me more accepting
    of having to change code I maintain to go with an incompatible change
    that someone else makes, if it is an improvement.  I don't feel that
    that is wasted work; it is helping to make the improvement.
Ah, but what is an improvement?  What if other people don't consider it
an improvement?  Who are you to say that your idea which hasn't been
discussed is an improvement?  To a large degree, compatibility IS
improvement.

    The forms of courtesy that you are urging seem reasonable
    but I don't think it is fair to urge me to follow them and
    ignore the question of whether others do so with me.
I do.  People will, in general, reciprocate courtesy.  If they don't,
that is reason to get upset with them (as I am doing with you), but not
to act discourteously on a professional level.  That road leads only to
the friction which you claim you constantly see.