Subject: Re: What's the point of flet? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Thu, 01 Nov 2001 02:49:15 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3213571753334152@naggum.net> * Drew McDermott | Gee, it works in Allegro: Gee, if you are told by your lawmakers not to do something, do you think that physically blocks your ability to do it, or do you think it is an appeal to your ethics to block your desire to do it? If you do something that you are not allowed to do and it "works", are you concerned that you are no longer safe from unwanted side-effects of doing something wrong, which you would be safe from if you only did stuff you were allowed to do, or do you not give a damn about such consequences? Some people have to be punished harhsly to understand that they should refrain from doing something that others have decided is wrong. Maybe "understand" is too strong -- I do not think it gets further than being scared of the consequences and thus only refrain from doing it without actually getting the idea. Lacking electrical shocks from the compiler to the stupid programmer, we rely on actual understanding. This will fail a significant fraction of the time, unfortunately, and the more people who think that feeding wrong code to a compiler and getting something useful back means it must be OK, the more problems the vendors have when the want to change important things in their code, and thus the whole user community is left in a serious bind if people who are not able to grasp the difference between right and wrong also blame the vendor if their bad code breaks in a new version. | I think you're not allowed to redefine car *globally*. It does not matter what you think. Consult the standard. The section you want to study is 11.1.2.1.2, but the whole thing should be read. Ignorance of the standard is no excuse. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.