Immutable things.

[Dwight Hughes]

| From: Christopher J. Vogt <vogt@novia.net>
| 
| My view is this:
| We have a model that many people feel still exceeds what is available
| today, and that is the LispM.  Duplicate that model as a baseline, and
then
| make additions/modifications.
| 
| So when I see a proposal, I ask myself "What problem with the LispM is
this
| going to solve?"  And for all the flaws in CL, I don't see how inventing
a
| new language (or dialect if you prefer) is going to solve more problems
| than it might potentially create.  Never mind trying to get 100 people to
| agree on each and every feature left in or left out!
| 
| Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
| mailto:vogt@novia.net
| Omaha, NE
| http://www.novia.net/~vogt/

I would not want to replace CL with something different for everybody that
uses the system - having CL as a *high-level* standard for the LispOS is
fine.
Using it for programming the kernel, and making it efficient at this on
vanilla hardware, is not my idea of a good time. Would you like to have a
10MB kernel? This could be what you would get with a LispOS programmed in
CL. That could make Windows 95 seem like a speed-demon in comparison -- not
exactly a goal I would be proud of. 

There are many reasons to have a lean, mean, lower-level, lighter weight
Lisp for the kernel -- not just for programming the OS, but for everyone
that will write a device driver, a real time control program, a new GC,
a signal processor, ....

-- Dwight