Complexity, yet again

["Scott E. Fahlman" <Fahlman@C.CS.CMU.EDU>]

In reply to: David A. Moon <Moon at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

        Well, almost...some things
        would just be too expensive to fix up, so they don't get fixed; others
        are fixable, but only at a cost the probably doesn't want to pay.  Once
        there are a few of these exceptions, you can't just tell the user to
        change what he likes and to just trust the system to keep everything
        consistent.

    I wish you would be specific.  I spent some time trying to guess what in the
    world you could be talking about.  I came up with two things: (1) you have to
    call the function recompile-flavor sometimes (but that bug was fixed about
    three years ago, and in any case was an implementation shortcut, not a
    language issue); (2) when you change the number of instance variables in a
    flavor that has already been instantiated, existing instances
    break...

Those are two of the things I had in mind, plus the non-propagation of
wrapper changes (if that hasn't also been fixed).  I have the impression
that there are several other such things, but I'd have to make a careful
scan of the new documentation to see if any of these really existed or
if I imagined them, and whether all such things have been fixed.  Also,
some machinery is described that allows the user to avoid having things
recompile when the first instance is created or at load time -- this is
not really a bug if the user ignores it, but I got the impression that
it was something that users ought to pay close attention to if they
don't want things to take forever.

If these things are fixed, or are fixable, then what we have is mostly a
documentation problem after all.  The point is to make it aboslutely
clear to the user that he doesn't have to worry about any of this, and
to hide the description of all this stuff in the "experts' section".

I won't be able to do that scan of the new manual for a few days, since
it lives at the office and I'm about to leave town for a bit.

-- Scott