[cells-devel] Cells Has Been Validated

[Thomas F. Burdick]

On 6/23/06, Ken Tilton <kentilton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, yeah. I finally fixed defclass. There is now an abbreviated defmodel,
> DEFMD:
>
> (defmd defmd-test (md-test-super)
>     (aaa :cell nil :initform nil :initarg :aaa :accessor aaa) ;; defmd would
> have written the same on just "aaa"

FIXED?!?!

Aren't a lot of problems with Cells traceable to using :cell nil,
because either someone thought "okay this one is an exception" or as
an efficiency hack?  Certainly accidentally non-Cell slots have caused
me no end of grief when I run into them.

I've gotten to the point of viewing :cell nil as a hack that's
occasionally necessary when either (a) I'm not able to fit some
behavior into the Cells model, or (b) the Cells model turns out to
have a shortcomming that needs to be fixed, but in the meantime we
have a work-around.  Given that, I'm not supporting :cell nil at all
in C4 (and C4-other-lisps); you can get the same effect by putting the
slots in a defclass and using it as a mixin, and that way you won't be
under any illusions that what you're doing is generally a good idea.