CLOS

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

    >   I'd rather not have to go through the code and
    >   change all my defclasses.

    My point is that it may be very important to change just SOME of the
    defclasses to use a different metaclass.  If one wanted to change the
    metaclass for an entire file I guess you could suround the entire source
    with a macrolet that redefined defclass.

Sure, sometimes you need this selectivity, and your metaclass solution
sounds like the right thing.  But sometimes you just want to go from
development mode to tense mode with as little hassle as possible, and
the right thing is to provide the user with a big switch he can throw at
compile-time.

Wrapping the universe in a big macrolet is conceptually clean, but
not a viable solution in most implementations -- readers get unhappy, or
at least rather inefficient, when you ask them to suck down a single
form of many magabytes.  A declaration could have the same effect
without straining the reader.

-- Scott