Recent questions about CLOS

[barmar@Think.COM (Barry Margolin)]

    Date: Wed, 19 Sep 1990 11:12-0400
    From: Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (David A. Moon)

    My point was not that people shouldn't switch to CLOS, but that if
    Symbolics puts nonstandard extensions into our CLOS, few customers will
    find that useful to them.  Please don't misunderstand me as saying that
    one should not use CLOS or should not write portable code.

If the extensions change the semantics of CLOS this is probably true,
but the kinds of extensions people are asking for are optimizations.
Few customers would be averse to writing

#+genera (:ordered-slots ...)

	1)  Security.  Even if you don't plan on porting, people
	    prefer not to be locked into one vendor, just in case.
	    By now, you should have gotten this message, (from DW
	    if for no other reason), so I'm a bit shocked to see
	    your response!

    This is precisely why I feel that there is little point in Symbolics
    making a CLOS which is different from the standard and would lock people
    into using our CLOS exclusively.  Evidently I wasn't very articulate
    yesterday since you thought I was saying the exact opposite of what I
    thought I was saying.

Should one decide to port, it's much easier to convert CLOS+extensions
to portable CLOS than to convert Flavors to CLOS.

Also, extensions sometimes become de facto standards, which often become
ANSI standards.


                                                barmar