Re: MOP question for language lawyers: can you specialize on standard-class

It isn't CLOS that should incorporate JIT technology.  It is a
responsibility of the implementation

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On Tue, May 26, 2026, 11:13 David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics
dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have been listening with keen interest to this topic.
>
> My understanding is that class instance slot access seems to be slow
> because of the desired versatility of the MOP? If that is the case, I had
> discussions at lunch, perhaps 30 years ago, with David Robson of the Xerox
> Parc team that did Smalltalk-80. And I distinctly recall him discussing the
> new technology of JIT compiling and caching. I had thought that CLOS
> incorporated similar strategies.
>
>
>
> > On May 26, 2026, at 01:18, Tim Bradshaw (as tfb at cley dot com) <
> [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > On 18 May 2026, at 15:20, [email protected] wrote:
> >>
> >> Anyway, I don’t like participating in discussions where somebody is
> “exaggerating for effect.” That reminds me too much of the bad days in
> comp.lang.lisp. Feel free to have the final word in our exchange.
> >
> > I'm sorry, I didn't intentionally exaggerate for effect.
> >
> > What I am trying to say is this:
> >
> > Some aspects of CLOS (slot access for one thing) are *significantly*
> slow.  CLOS is about 40 years old, so I think that if it could have been
> made fast it would have been by now.  So I infer that this is because of
> something to do with the design of CLOS.
> >
> > Julia's object system is not slow, but it is not correct to say it has
> 'solved it' in the sense that we could just use what Julia does in CLOS
> (this is what I thought you meant when you said that), because Julia's
> object system is significantly different to CLOS.
> >
> > So the interesting question is: what could be done to CLOS to make it
> quick?  And in particular can anything be done *without compromises*?  I
> believe the answer to that is no, it can't: to make slot access quick in
> CLOS you would need to make promises that you will not use various features
> of it.
> >
> > That's what Dylan did, for instance.
> >
> > --tim
> >
> >
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