Re: RFC: Extending method specializers



Slava Akhmechet wrote:
Ken Tilton <kennytilton@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:


You might have the wrong question. Mine would be why you would want
generic dispatch to do such a thing. My answer would be that you have
fallen in love with the mechanism, and now want to use it for
everything in sight.

The very experience of learning CLOS quickly results in unrealistic
expectations. People learn the basics, start using CLOS for practical
things, and eventually run into a situation where they want to do
something special.

Like someone just learning to play the piano who falls in love with D minor, the saddest of all keys, and wants to play nothing else. This we call a disease, as in to be cured.

They search a little, and find to their delight
that they can extend/customize CLOS with fairly little effort to do
exactly what they want. Rinse and repeat, a number of times.

That is the disease. We call it lock-in, as in, oh, crap this is the first thing I thought of, I must make it work, I must not think of anything else, no matter how many ways there are to solve this problem with a big ball of mud.


Sooner or later they run into an aspect of CLOS that cannot be easily
customized (of course this happens later rather than sooner because
MOP addresses most things people want to do). At that point the idea
that CLOS cannot be bent to the will of the programmer is impossible
to swallow. So people try to put square pegs through round holes (and
often succeed).

Encouraged and supported by the Syntax-Obsessed Bots of c.l.l


Once you let us customize class composition and discriminating
functions, can you really blame us for wanting ML-style pattern
matching in method specializers? :)

For discovering a language with a thousand-page spec and then obsessing over feature X like some moth beating its head against the first bright bulb it finds until it gets fried to a crisp? I think I just did.

kt

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