What is a ``reflective'' system?

[BRIAN SPILSBURY]

>"Jordan" == Jordan Henderson <jordan@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> writes:

> I think that perhaps the goal of full reflectivity is not best.  If
> we could define a LispVM separately, perhaps with several
> implementations (C, JIT, interpreted Lisp for prototyping) then the
> rest of the system could be fully reflective assembling/compiling to
> this.  It would require that a LispVM backend be written for CMU-CL
> eventually.  I can see objections already.  We have people who want
> to use CMU-CL with native compilation for everything, without regard
> to whether this is a good idea or not.  I think these people have
> "come in late from the picture show" and didn't hear that we were
> going to have a LispVM.

Having a LispVM does not exclude also have alternatives.
Consider that most lisps will happily mix byte-code and native
compiled code.

Write a LispVM compiler in lisp.

I don't think that's really an issue.

Brian