[lisp-interface-library-devel] Fwd: com.clearly-useful.generic-collection-interface

[Jason Aeschliman]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jason Aeschliman <j.aeschliman at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: com.clearly-useful.generic-collection-interface
> Date: October 31, 2012 11:37:35 AM PDT
> To: lisp-interface-library-devel at common-lisp.net
> 
> Hello Faré
> 
>>  It notably simplifies the automatic interface wrapping code.
> 
> *slaps forehead* ah, of course
> 
>>  NB: What does :eponymous-method mean?
> 
> 
> it means a generic function of one argument is defined with the same name
> as the protocol. types implementing the protocol will have a method on that
> function generated (just identity), so the name of the protocol can serve as
> a kind of 'conversion' function, and you can define arbitrary methods on it
> etc.  it might make more sense to just define two separate protocols, honestly.
> 
>>  Maybe we should continue this discussion on the
>>  lisp-interface-library-devel mailing-list?
> 
> done.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jason
> 
>> 
>> On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 10:33 PM, Jason Aeschliman
>> <j.aeschliman at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Hello Faré,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for the privilege! I spent some time reading over the code a bit
>>> today.
>>> In terms of design, it looks like we could use some clear protocols to begin
>>> tackling collections well -- I'd like to suggest the ones I've been working
>>> on
>>> here:
>>> https://github.com/jaeschliman/com.clearly-useful.generic-collection-interface/blob/master/protocols.lisp
>>> as they seem to me to capture a pretty good minimal read-only definition of
>>> some basic containers "types". I think we should use my protocol
>>> implementation
>>> to define the method groups as I think it's very helpful for organizing
>>> code, and allows
>>> for type checking outside of the class hierarchy in a useful way.
>>> 
>> Yes, this looks like an excellent starting point.
>> I don't know how much we care about name compatibility with existing
>> libraries (e.g. cl-containers), or similar libraries in other
>> languages (Clojure, Haskell, Scala, OCaml, etc.), but if we do, now is
>> the last time to give a look.
>> 
>> NB: What does :eponymous-method mean?
>> 
>>> I'd also like to suggest moving away from the
>>> design of having functions like pure:insert and stageful:insert, one of
>>> which
>>> returns a new value, the other updating in place. This seems to me like it
>>> will cause people unneeded headaches down the road. Better to have
>>> one function (I'm fond of clojure's conj) which non-destructively augments
>>> a collection (/any/ collection) and returns the new one, and another
>>> function
>>> (conj!, or nconj may be more CL) which operates destructively if possible
>>> or throws an error. Keeping these things separate will be very important
>>> for usability IMO
>>> 
>> I feel it's important to have the "same" name for all four flavors (so
>> far) of our functions:
>> pure, stateful, classy, posh.
>> It notably simplifies the automatic interface wrapping code.
>> But it also simplifies the amount of information a human must handle.
>> If you understand what a function does in one style,
>> it's pretty straightforward how it will behave in other styles.
>> Usually, you program in only one style at once, and there's no clash.
>> When there is a clash, using a package prefix makes it clear.
>> 
>>> In general, I think some kind of 'design document' could be very helpful…
>>> something that just lays out the overall areas the project should be
>>> covering,
>>> e.g. definition of container protocols, equality and comparison protocols,
>>> ips->oop conversion, oop->ips etc.
>>> 
>> Indeed. The article at https://github.com/fare/lil-ilc2012/ is the
>> only thing I have so far, but one of our contributors is thinking
>> about writing a tutorial.
>> 
>> Maybe we should continue this discussion on the
>> lisp-interface-library-devel mailing-list?
>> 
>> —♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
>> They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the
>> Wright brothers.  But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
>>                — Carl Sagan

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