I don't want to ruin the language just so that it appeals to some people, it's already fine for me.
To an outsider his comments seem pretty reasonable. Why would they ruin Common Lisp?
* It's easy to suggest designing an OO system better than CLOS. It's harder to point out any examples tho.
* Remove unused functions, what?
* "Make FOO standard" but a bunch of popular languages don't even have a spec, why is this an issue even?
I didn't read him as suggesting that CLOS be replaced, but that it be embraced.
I have no idea what he meant about unused functions. My experience has been that when I think something in Common Lisp is pointless … I'm wrong.
One of the great advantages of Lisp in the 90s was that it standardised things that other languages left undefined (indeed, this is still an advantage Common Lisp has over Scheme). It seems like a good idea to keep on expanding the standardised area, as we gain experience & understanding.
Some people just don't like CL much, despite solid foundation and steady progress with community projects. That's okay, we all have one or another language we are not very fond of.
May I ask why this can be considered ‘ruin’ing? These sort of changes will be useful for all CL users IMO.
> it's already fine for me
Maybe to you, but not for me or many, many people who went to Clojure apparently.
… and maybe someday you can propose your own project, something like CL21!