Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!dlw From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: updating random slots in (say) defstruct Message-ID: <1990Jan17.000529.8352@odi.com> Date: 17 Jan 90 00:05:29 GMT References: <18963@bellcore.bellcore.com> <12955@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: dlw@odi.com Organization: Object Design, Inc. Lines: 15 In-Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU's message of 16 Jan 90 02:59:28 GMT In article <12955@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) writes: Zetalisp had the defstruct-description structure to access basic information, like the names of all the slots, the names of the accessors to each slot, etc. Too bad CL dropped it. Why was that? Anything to do with metaobjects? In a lot of cases like this, the feature did not carry over into CL because, while many people saw the motivation, they didn't all like the details, and it didn't seem that the time or energy existed to form a concensus. Quite a few good Zetalisp features were left by the wayside in this way. Often we (Moon and I) told everybody that the features were genuinely important, but the others didn't believe us, thinking the features were too complicated and not very useful. Now a some of them are (apparently) being added as part of the ANSI standardization process, as the user demand becomes clear.