CommonLoops

[Daniel L. Weinreb <DLW@SCRC-QUABBIN.ARPA>]

    Date: Thu, 15 Aug 85 10:11 EDT
    From: Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman@CMU-CS-C.ARPA>


    I don't see the CommonLoops proposal as trying to be all things to all
    people.  The basic CommonLoops langauge, with some of the proposed
    extensions, looks to me (as a relative novice in this game) like just
    the right level for most of the things I want to do.  It's clean and
    easy to understand, and it has the property that you don't run into any
    of the complexity until and unless you need it.  The lack of this
    property was the biggest problem with Flavors, in my opinion.  I could
    easily imagine doing almost all my work in base-level CommonLoops and
    using it as the teaching vehicle for students new to Lisp and objects.

Scott, I've heard you say this a few times now, both on the mail and in
person.  In a later message, you also said (speaking about Common
Loops):

    Unlike flavors, it does not inflict a tremendous load of complexity on
    the user who wants to do something simple.

I genuinely don't know what you are referring to here.  Your implication
seems to be that to do even simple things using Flavors, you first need
to understand a lot of complex stuff that isn't really necessary if you
only want to do something "simple".  I don't understand why this should
be the case.

I think the problem is that I don't know what you mean by "simple" in
this context.  Could you please construct an example in which the
requirements of the programmer are "simple" in the sense you mean, so
that I could see how Flavors can meet those requirements only with a
tremendous load of complexity, whereas CommonLoops can meet the same
requirements without such complexity?  I hope this might illustrate some
significant distinctions between the two approaches.  Thanks.