Re: A Dylan implemented on Common Lisp

[Simon Beaumont <simon.beaumont@bt-sys.bt.co.uk>]

andrew@cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn) wrote:

> The consequence of Common Lisp being defined as a
> ball of mud was that a full Common Lisp implementation required, circa
> 1988, about 12 Mb of VMem before you even started defining your own
> functions.
> 
> If you add on top of this the overheads for CLOS (which is also not
> layered and hence made Common Lisp an even bigger ball of mud) then
> you can change thet 12 Mb to 20 Mb.
> 

Er um, not quite: Allegro PC (1.0) image, including the "Ball of Mud" CLOS
and CommonGraphics as well as few implementation functions
like editors, debugger, inspectors etc. is about 3Mb! I think you
should talk to your implementor rather than the language designers!

This tired old argument is wearing a bit thin by now, along with
the GC problem etc, try basing your arguments on observations rather
than dogma!

Some common-lisp implementations are fat, some are thin.

CLOS is part of the language definition now, not an overhead.
If you want a bare functional language (with parens) try Scheme,
then you can invent your own brand of fatness so as not to feel
left out.

Simon