Subject: Re: All instances From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 22:32:14 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3202065130527468@naggum.net> * "Geoff Summerhayes" <sNuOmSrPnAoMt@hNoOtSmPaAiMl.com> > I don't agree on a couple of points. Certainly not with the OP and its use > in a large system lacking documentation, I was thinking more along the lines > of debugging, being able to say, > > (let ((*print-readably* t)) > (format t "~{~A~%~}" (all-instances 'foo :derived-classes nil))) > > or something similar. It may be more trouble to implement than it is worth, > but I'm not going to dismiss it out-of-hand, it really is kind of sexy. :-) Nobody else is dismissing it, either. _Please_ make an effort to avaid reading so much weird shit into what I write. I am trying to make you understand that this is a trade-off, a convenience factor, etc, that has some costs as well as some benefits. If the world had clear-cut cases of stuff with no costs and all benefits and vice versa, we simply would not need to engage in engineering at all. E.g, some seriously misguided people think that thay are making life easier by removing some trade-offs and giving you "The Right Solution", but they do not even recognize that they are operating within a context that may not be the same as that of others. This happens _all_the_time_. Other people simply are not copies of yourself who respond and think the same way you do. It is flat out _wrong_ to presume that what works for you and appeals to you will work for and appeal to others. (Well, if it does, you are a fantastically boring person. :) > I disagree with the `"good" features -> worse programmers -> less documentation' > argument also, Small wonder. I never even _implied_ "worse programmers". It is clear that you do not subscribe to the long-standing and unchallenged Sapir- Whorff hypothesis that language shapes the way we think (or _determines_ it in the stronger version of the hypothesis). I find this so obvious that I have trouble dealing with people who do not accept it, and wonder what they use _their_ languages for, but if I were to explain it in a very different way, it has to do with what is more or less convenient to do, and therefore more likely that people _will_ do. It is a little like burglar alarms. They do manifestly _not_ work well because the burglar gets caught more often in houses with burglar alarms than houses without (they actually do not) but because of the much higher _perceived_ risk of getting caught. So instead of burglarizing an alarmed house, they check out the first non-alarmed house they find on their way, instead. This does not have _anything_ to do with smart/dumb criminals, but with the psychology of convenience, _all_ other things being equal. Smart people simply do not waste their resources doing things that are inefficient. This means that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to figure out the least resource-intensive way to do something. I.e., the _better_ the programmers who are exposed to a system with clever features that obviate the need for boring work, the more the clever features are used and the boring work undone. Personally, I could not possibly care less what happens to "worse programmers". What concerns me is the smartest of the crop and how they will routinely refuse to waste their time doing idiot stuff when better ways exist -- hell, they even _make_ better ways that does away with the idiot stuff. That is how the allInstances thing was invented in the first place (it was way easier than something else), if I read Frank A. Adrian's story correctly and it was _not_ because of any _desire_ to make people do the wrong thing. It just has that effect on people who really think about what they do and really do figure out how to make the most of their systems. > OTOH, maybe you were just mocking my fuzzy thinking with that argument. > In that case, ignore this. Well, my wish for the day is that you manage to read this as a serious opinion and chanin of thought, even though it is miles away from how you evidently think yourself. #:Erik -- Travel is a meat thing.