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From: pd@sics.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Technology is NOT Primitive
Message-ID: <1572@sics.se>
Date: Fri, 30-Oct-87 09:39:29 EST
Article-I.D.: sics.1572
Posted: Fri Oct 30 09:39:29 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 3-Nov-87 02:14:46 EST
References: <3405@ece-csc.UUCP> <638@its63b.ed.ac.uk>
Reply-To: pd@sics.UUCP (Per Danielsson)
Organization: Swedish Institute of Computer Science
Lines: 19
Xref: utgpu comp.lang.misc:790 comp.software-eng:30

In article <5079@utah-cs.UUCP> shebs%defun.UUCP@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs) writes:
>By your rationale, every language should include PEEK and POKE, and the
>hardware shouldn't generate any of those silly "segmentation violation"
>traps.  Lisp systems should allow the programmer to acquire the address
>of an object, even if it will be worthless one millisecond later when the
>garbage collector kicks in.  I hardly think a responsible language designer
>would include a capability that has proven from experience to be a source
>of catastrophic and mysterious bugs, especially if the capability itself
>is not particularly important.

Lisp machines allows precisely that. It is a quite necessary part of
the system. Of course the user will have to know exactly what he is
doing when using the facility, and most users seldom have any need for
it, but it has to be there.
-- 
Per Danielsson          UUCP: {mcvax,decvax,seismo}!enea!sics!pd
Swedish Institute of Computer Science
PO Box 1263, S-163 13 SPANGA, SWEDEN
"No wife, no horse, no moustache."