Re: Issue: EVAL-OTHER (Version 2)

[masinter.pa@Xerox.COM]

My impression from hearing about current applications of CLOS is that your
assertion "w/o generic EVAL or APPLY, CLOS is just a bag on the side of CL"
is not true.

CLOS claim to integration in CL comes both from the integration of method
invocation with function call and the integration of the class hierarchy
with the previous Common Lisp type hierarchy. Both of those allow for
treating CLOS as the language and CLtL as the previous subset. CLOS and CL
are consistent in treating the type hierarchy as the mechanism of
dispatching on varying forms of behavior, but not relying too heavily on
the function-as-object style which is popular in Scheme.

The notion of making APPLY (or  FUNCALL) generic is possibly quite
interesting, although it implies a different model of "object oriented"
than the one currently embodied in Common Lisp and CLOS.