miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (Brad Miller) (12/19/89)
Very short review [i.e. contains opinions; you have been warned] Yes, it's around (my copy arrived friday). It's big. Those of you wondering what to implement as a compiler project should start running NOW, screaming for the security and simplicity of ADA. To it's credit, the book (and the proposed standard) clarifies many obscurities in the 1/e. All non-trivial changes to 1/e are clearly marked by a change bar (which often has the annoying tendancy to disappear accross page breaks). Since the book contains the complete text of 1/e, it continues to be useful with current implementations, but lets you know what is likely to break next time you get a new release. Visionary implementors are already wondering what else to allow besides setf in the car of a list in the function position to defun and it's ilk. <Suggestion: how about eval :-)> Lawyers are wondering how to screw up environments (with the new environment access functions) such that non-top-level defuns will expand incorrectly; how the new eval-when works, and why it refers to compler-let, which was to be removed from the language <ok. a nit>. Hackers are wondering why they should disagree with the proposed complex ordering procedure for handling non-local exits (e.g. discovering when would it be useful to have an unwind-protect throw to a catch that is between the unwind-protect and the actual thrown tag that is currently being processed). Not to mention the regularization of property lists, and trying to use CLOS to regularize them to objects besides symbols. Abusers are already recasting their systems as enhanced Loops and compiler macros. Lusers are wondering if they should wait for the 1996 edition, when the backlash will have defined strategic subsets. The incompatible changes, new features, and clarifications to the 1984 edition are all presented in GLS's inimitable style, and despite protestations to the contrary in the preface to the 2/e, there ARE new jokes. Me, I'm getting two copies, one for home and one for the office; if the illustrations of the math functions had been in color, I might have even left one on my coffee table :-).