Subject: Re: Why Arc isn't especially OO
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 21:14:05 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3217698843229235@naggum.net>

* Alexander Kjeldaas <astor@fast.no>
| I have not considered handling resourcing, pooling objects etc. because
| they would be engineering tricks to work around the GC, and if done
| extensively to reduce consing, would lead to the kinds of bugs that GC is
| there to avoid in the first place.

  This is an incredibly unwarranted assumption.  Do you still think in C++
  when you are discussing memory management in Common Lisp?  It is so wrong
  to think of these techniques as "engineering tricks" and especially to do
  so "to work around the GC".  The same condescending comments would apply
  to nreverse and other non-consing functions.  There is a difference
  between being aware of and trying to prevent wanton waste and thinking
  that whoever cleans up after you has problems so you had better not drop
  any garbage around.  Good programmers are concerned about wanton waste or
  any resource, and not because they "work around" CPU speeds or GC, but
  because they are good practitioners of the art of programming.

  Reading this discussion sounds just like a documentary I saw the other
  day on the coral reefs of Australia.  The narrator spoke French with
  mostly English words and usually English pronunciation like most French
  do, but retained French idioms, choice of latinate words, and where the
  words looked too much like a French word, chose French pronunciation,
  etc, basically largely unintelligible unless one knows what the French
  would have meant had it actually been in French.  In other words, I think
  you are speaking Common Lisp with _very_ heavy accent.  That does not
  mean that a lot of the issues you raise are invalid or uninteresting,
  only that they look very much like someone's C++ perspective and may not
  actually be relevant to Common Lisp.

///
-- 
  The past is not more important than the future, despite what your culture
  has taught you.  Your future observations, conclusions, and beliefs are
  more important to you than those in your past ever will be.  The world is
  changing so fast the balance between the past and the future has shifted.