Re: proposal: encourage no side-effect garbage

[Scott.Fahlman@B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU]

I share Joe Ginder's view that we ought to encourage Common Lisp
implementors not to cons promiscuously, but I don't think that such
non-binding encouragements belong in the standard, and I don't think we
ought to make cons-avoidance a requirement.  Users, and particularly large
vendors like Inference, should consider consing behavior as an important
criterion in choosing a Lisp, and should let vendors know that this is
at least as important to them as shaving a few microseconds off TAK.

If the standard is going to contain such encouragements, we should also
encourage implementors to be fast, stick to the standard, produce excellent
documentation, and fix bugs within ten days...

-- Scott