need subset of CL!

[Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.STANFORD.EDU>]

| Date: Fri,  6 Dec 85 22:19:16 EST
| From: Tim McNerney <TIM@MIT-MC.ARPA>
| Subject:  The variables +, -, *, and /
| I suspect that you will find that the majority of graduate students in AI
| using Common Lisp for their thesis project will not learn about even a
| significant fraction of Common Lisp's pitfalls before they complete their
| degrees.  They will have neither the time nor the inclination.

I take this as evidence that CL is too big. If there are so many functions
and special cases (keyword & optional args) to learn that the student
doesn't have time to learn basic stuff like packages, something is wrong.
I continue to say that we need some subset of CL that (1) can be taught
completely to a student in one semester, (2) can be implemented on a
small microcomputer by a small team of programmers in a reasonable time,
(3) can be exhaustively tested for correctness (I don't mean by exhaustive
trial of all combinations; I mean that each and every feature is tested
without exception) by a reasonable test suite.