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

I heard this a lot from MIT hackers, particularly in the MacLisp days. “The sufficiently smart compiler will….”

It is intuitively obvious that the sufficiently smart compiler never arrived.

> On May 26, 2026, at 5:41 AM, Tim Bradshaw (as tfb at cley dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On 26 May 2026, at 10:11, David McClain (as dbm at refined-audiometrics dot com) <[email protected]> wrote:
>> 
>> And I distinctly recall him discussing the new technology of JIT compiling and caching. I had thought that CLOS incorporated similar strategies.
> 
> My take on this (having heard people say similar things) is that there is always quite a lot of 'we can do this slightly-unspecified heroic / magic thing in the implementation and everything will be quick', and then the slightly-unspecified thing never gets done because it turns out not to be practical.
> 
> Don't get me wrong: I *want* CLOS slot access to be quick.
> 
> --tim
> 
> 
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