Subject: Re: Allegro compilation warnings From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: 2000/10/12 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3180376670416509@naggum.net> * Marco Antoniotti <marcoxa@cs.nyu.edu> | The DEFSYSTEM utility is *not* part of CLTL2. You are probably | referring to the DEFSYSTEM which come with ACL. This is not | portable. What utter hogwash! You know better than this, Marco, so don't try to play presidential campaigns on us, even though the rest of the media does its best to dumb down to the level of the two jerkfaces. Here's a hint: The implementation of the function CAR in Common Lisp is not portable. Still, portable Common Lisp programs may use CAR. How _can_ this be? How can we possibly use non-portable software to write portable programs? This must be a mystery to people who buy your line, Marco! Provided they think about it at all. | Instead, MK-DEFSYSTEM is. _Really_? You're clearly saying that if I use MK-DEFSYSTEM, I can't "port" the build rules to Allegro CL's defsystem and vice versa, are you not? How f**king portable is that? _Designing_ for multiple, incompatible defsystems so we can't move build rules around is such an incredibly moronic thing to do that it ought to result in public flogging while being forced to watch every presidential campaign ad. Weren't you the guy who only a short time ago argued that XML was a move in the right direction? My argument against XML is that it doesn't help squat with the real problem, which is that data is so dependent on the interpretation of the structure being represented that the syntax is immaterial in comparison. Now you go and prove my whole case by having a DEFSYSTEM wherein the build rules, which are _way_ more important to a user than whether the implementation machinery is or is not portable, are worthless if he switches the "application" that uses those build rules, and he has to encode his old data in a new format, which is supposedly "portable", just like XML is "portable" on some irrelevant scale, and therefore "better"? Methinks you've been had, big time, by the XML hype and have missed the opportunity to think about information representation entirely, instead confused into thinking that some irrelevant piece of the puzzle needs to be "portable" (the syntax or the implementation), and that that's it, we can all relax now and ignore the cost of conversion, irritation with subtle differences, and the mysterious bugs that crop up because we poor humans remember too well. This is why XML is _not_ s step in the right direction: It works just like a pacifier on screaming babies who are duped into feeling they got something good stuffed into their face and so they stop screaming for whatever they _really_ wanted (love, compassion, body contact, etc, clearly not as easy to market as some disgusting piece of plastic, but hey, let's just shut the kids up, just like we can make all those stupid crying users shut up with some irrelevant hype that goes nowhere and does nothing for them!). Stop treating people like screaming babies and grow up, damn it! It's the _information_ that needs to be portable -- to hell with "portable" implementations that make that information non-portable or some "portable" syntax that makes it even harder _actually_ to get portable information. Disclaimer 1: This is why I haven't even _looked_ at MK-DEFSYSTEM, so I'm just taking Marco's word for it that it is incompatible with Allegro CL's defsystem and every other defsystem by implication. Disclaimer 2: I started using Allegro CL's defsystem because it was there, well integrated into the full system, not because I made any conscious decision to use that defsystem in particular. It was just there when I needed it. Having spent lots of time understanding how to use it and extend it and how it works, I'm not going to throw it away for some new shit just because it has a portable implementation that's going to be a helpful feature exactly _once_ in its lifetime. #:Erik -- I agree with everything you say, but I would attack to death your right to say it. -- Tom Stoppard