Re: setf.scm

[Russ McManus <russell.mcmanus@gs.com>]

Per Bothner <bothner@cygnus.com> writes:

> But I want an engineering design (pattern?)  for a maintainable,
> extensible, robust understandable package.  I want someone to show
> me how multi-methods makes that easier.

There are some books that might satisfy your curiosity.  I looked
through 'Object Oriented Programming in Common Lisp' last night, and I
couldn't come up with a small example to post.  Excellent book,
though, none the less.

> > If you can't get the built in dispatch to do what you want then MOP?
> 
> If you suggest using the MOP then you're basically agreeing that
> multi-methods are not useful for real systems.

Perhaps you should drop a line over in comp.lang.lisp or
comp.lang.clos asking for examples before you decide that
multi-methods are useless.  Just because no one on this list is able
to offer up an example on short order, doesn't mean that they not the
bee's knees.

Although I don't have first hand knowledge, I'm betting that some of
the best-known real systems that have been built with Common Lisp make
use of multi-methods.  One project that jumps to mind is CL-HTTP.

I'm reminded of the C programmer who exclaims loudly "Closures?  Why
would I want those anyway?  All they do is make programs hard to
understand!  And plus, they're probably slow."  ;^)

-russ

--
"Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore: it's too crowded."
             --Yogi Berra