Forwarded message

[Guy.Steele at CMU-10A]

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Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1982 01:43:00 -0000
From: FEINBERG at CMU-20C
To:   Guy.Steele at CMUA
Subject: Giving in to Maclisp
Via:     CMU-20C; 30 Jan 1982 2149-EST

Howdy!
	I was looking through Decisions.Press and I came upon a
little section, which I was surprised to see:


        Adopt functions parallel to GETF, PUTF, and REMF, to be
        called GETPR, PUTPR, and REMPR, which operate on symbols.
        These are analogous to GET, PUTPROP, and REMPROP of
        MACLISP, but the arguments to PUTPR are in corrected order.
        (It was agreed that GETPROP, PUTPROP, and REMPROP would be
        better names, but that these should not be used to minimize
        compatibility problems.)

Are we really going to give all the good names away to Maclisp in the
name of "compatibility"?  Compatibility in what way? Is it not clear
that we will have to do extensive modifications to Maclisp to get
Common Lisp running in it anyway? Is it also not clear that Maclisp
programs will also require extensive transformation to run in Common
Lisp? Didn't everyone agree that comming up with a clean language,
even at the expense of compatibility, was most important? I think it
is crucial that we break away from Maclisp braindammage, and not let
it steal good names in the process.  PUTPR is pretty meaningless,
whereas PUTPROP is far more clear.

						--Chiron
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