Re: Naive DEFSYSTEM replacement

On Sun, 2025-07-27 at 19:11 +0100, Tim Bradshaw wrote:
> On 27 Jul 2025, at 01:55, Adam Weaver (as adam at cleversure dot com
> dot au) <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 
> > You've invented a strawman argument so you can argue with it. 
> > ASDF is "complicated" in the sense that it is thousands upon
> > thousands
> > of lines of code. Hell, even its maintainer recently said "I don't
> > know
> > what all of it is there for".
> 
> 
> Ah, I'd assumed both that you'd read the ASDF manual and that you
> understood that writing robust, portable, multipurpose, extensible,
> backwards-compatible tools instead of fragile, non-portable, single-
> purpose non-extensible ones with no requirement for backwards-
> compatibility does tend to involve, as you say, thousands and
> thousands of lines of code.

Bahahahaha! So you don't know either. It's cool bro! You don't have to
know everything. Obviously *no-one* really knows (nowadays) why ASDF is
as complicated in its implementation as it is. 

I assumed that there were reasons for it ... hence my original question
... but right now I'm guessing that ASDF has just accreted years of bit
rot, and that's why a ... what ... file loader (tracking dependencies
for later reload), test runner harness, and ... maybe c-compiler
interface is as large a footprint as it is. 

> 
> Obviously at least the first assumption was incorrect.  Sorry, that
> was my mistake.

Oh get back in your box! I was pretty open with what *I* *don't* know
... that's why I asked! I figured some of the more experienced dudes
around here could explain it.

But instead I've had arrogant responses, complaints that "you're doing
it wrong", and adjacent-to-ad-hominem arguments instead.

Funnily enough, it was the ASDF maintainer who had the best response of
"dunno, I don't know what it's all there for". I appreciated the
candour.

A.

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