Immutable things.

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 11:24 AM -0500 5/13/97, Dwight Hughes wrote:
>| 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.

I'm not sure what all you see in the "kernel", but you can have a complete
CL implementation in less than 2MB (see MCL), so I'm not sure where you are
seeing 10MB?

>
>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, ....

I don't know that I'm aguing against a limited Lisp (i.e. subset of CL) for
the kernel.  But I am also unconvinced that it is really needed.

Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
mailto:vogt@novia.net
Omaha, NE
http://www.novia.net/~vogt/