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From: hedrick@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: net.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Vax/VMS Common Lisp : Version 1.1
Message-ID: <3933@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Sun, 6-Oct-85 23:52:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.3933
Posted: Sun Oct  6 23:52:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 8-Oct-85 04:19:25 EDT
References: <259@yetti.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 18
Keywords: VMS, Common Lisp

I don't know specifically why DEC chose not to autoload, but if their
code is sharable, there are performance advantages to having the whole
thing in one core image.  On a VM system, the parts that you are not
using should be paged out, and thus should not affect you.  If more
than one user is using the same thing, you would be sharing the same
copy.  If you autoload, unless there is a very fancy implementation,
the code is loaded into memory that is dynamically allocated.  This
means that each user has his own copy.  The exact tradeoffs depend
upon details of the pager.  I am assuming a pager such as TOPS-20.

Your question about Franz wasn't quite clear.  I hope you realize that
Franz existed before the Common Lisp standard.  The people at Franz,
Inc.  didn't have much choice about whether Common Lisp was compatible
with Franz, since Franz already existed, and they didn't control the
standard-making enterprise.  In general I think it is fair to say
that the Common Lisp definers were concerned mostly with compatibility
with Lisp Machine Lisp, and that they were not concerned too much
about the size of the language.