The appearance of the calls looks special and awkward. In my case, nearly every line will be a call into my Java libraries. This would render the lisp code maximumly awkward, ugly, and difficult to read. The solution I had up to this point made the lisp code natural and native looking.

I think the JSS code is nice if you have a few places you need to link into and didn't want to write the interface code. Using ABCL as an extension language to a large application is an entirely different story.

In terms of returning lists and arrays, I have many places where, for example, a method would return a list of records. Using it as a lisp list when in lisp of very natural and works well with things like loop. Having to call Java to iterate through lists and arrays is, again, unnecessarily unnatural.

I think using that extension to clos I proposed could solve my problem but would be complicated to get working right. I lean towards changing ABCL's REPL. It would work as it does now but if it can't find a function, it automatically tries finding a Java method before issuing a function not found error message. I think this would be pretty easy to implement and would automatically eliminate most interface code requirements, and render the interface natural to lisp.

On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 5:08 AM, Mark Evenson <evenson@panix.com> wrote:

On Feb 19, 2013, at 1420 , Blake McBride <blake@mcbride.name> wrote:

> Lest there be any confusion, I deeply appreciate the ABCL system and all those who contribute to it.

From my side, I didn't intend my message to seem defensive, more
just a clarification of points that I have expressed to people, but
not on the mailing list. And posts like yours are quite welcome.

I'm still pondering how to answer your proposals, but it is taking a long time to find the time.

Just two quick points:

1. Have you looked at JSS as Alessio suggests? Can you comment
as to how it meets your numbered points?

2. Changing the call/return values from the Java FFI in changing
java.lang.List to/from Lisp CONS as well as Java array to/from Lisp
arrays would break existing code that expects otherwise. Any ideas
on how to migrate?

--
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before but there is nothing to compare to it now."