pathnames

[Kelly Murray]

> I want something that works -- projects like this can easily be killed
> by lofty goals. Start simple. If you want to abandon pathnames
> completely, do so when you have something that will let you do so. I..
> No flame intended, mind you - I would love to see an OS in which
> everything is a persistent object, with older objects stored to some

I kindly point out that not having pathnames *is* starting out simple!

You can start writing programs in which everything is a persistent
object by first starting writing programs in which everthing is an object.
The persistent part can come later.
One can "fake" persistent objects by making entire processes be
persistent.  The major semantic problem is you can't share your
objects with other processes, only your own processes can access them.
This isn't a problem during development -- you must get it debugged
and working before you can share the code/objects with others.

As I've said, Allegro Common Lisp has a "dumplisp" command that saves
an entire lisp process, which can be started back up.
So you develop your code, and do a dumplisp to save all the objects.
Because Lisp allows dynamic redefinition, if you change your code,
you just *change the code*, and now your process has the new code.
It's not like C, there is not recompile & relink & rerun development cycle!

-kelly