Re: Oerationalizing the generic functions

[John R Ellis <Ellis@YALE.ARPA>]

    I don't have any magic solutions, just want to point out that this
    is one of the places where the strict object/message model of
    computation fits a little awkwardly.

Agreed, but compared to the current T situation -- hardwired generic
comparisons for a small set of predefined types -- the object model would
provide a more useful generality despite its awkwardness.

Based on my own experience, when I define a new type and the comparison
operations on it, I don't want to do coercions or comparisons between
that type and other types.  E.g. I might define a universe of nodes in
a DAG and define an ordering on those nodes; nodes are only compared to
other nodes, not to integers or strings or whatever.  In these situations,
the object model works just fine for implementing comparisons.  It's only
when one wants to introduce type coercion that it gets awkward.
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