Re: CLOS

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Fri, 14 Aug 87 11:59:18 PDT
    From: Ken Kahn <Kahn.pa@Xerox.COM>

	However, it has been proposed to add a feature by which the
	programmer can declare that nothing will be added or changed at
	run time, and then to compile the entire program as a unit.

    The point is to leave it up to the meta object protocol and not treat
    the entire program as a unit.  Some parts of a program could use such
    metaclasses and other parts remain unoptimized.

I was oversimplifying for the sake of brevity when I referred to the
entire program.  Of course one can really apply this optimization to
just some of the classes in a program.

I don't think I really care whether the programmer's declaration that
flexibility should be sacrificed for performance is implemented by
metaclasses or by some other mechanism.  Doing it with metaclasses
seems baroque and cumbersome to me, but as long as it's only a
question of implementation and doesn't affect the language, I really
don't care.