Subject: Re: defvar and (declaim (special ...))
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/04/14
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3133044438527663@naggum.no>

* Vassil Nikolov <vnikolov@poboxes.com>
| I asked that as a general question, I don't have a specific case at hand.

  then my specific question is how you came to ask that general question.
  this is not to quibble -- I need to know how you come upon questions the
  answer for which has no expectation of value to you.

  I realize that underneath your approach is a desire to let the answers to
  the question define the meaning of the question and that it would be an
  interesting exercise to find the most valuable answer in this regard, and
  that I thwart your approach by asking you to make the question specific
  before it has any meaning, i.e., answers, _but_ I would still very much
  like to know what thought processes generate the questions and what they
  are based on.  I think I could fill the underlying desire to learn in
  much more efficient ways, or learn from same in much more efficient ways,
  if I knew what makes up a good question of the kind you make.

  incidentally, I think computing the optimum load-order for a set of both
  functions and variables and declarations and macros and all this good
  stuff is a very challenging task, which effectively asks of a fully
  loaded system "how did you get here, and what's the best way to do it
  over again".  this question could also be asked of a running Unix system
  to make it dump configuration files in such a way that it would return to
  the same state after a boot sequence, so it is a question that pertains
  to any system that accepts changes to itself after it has started running.

#:Erik
-- 
environmentalists are much too concerned with planet earth.  their geocentric
attitude prevents them from seeing the greater picture -- lots of planets are
much worse off than earth is.