On Sun, Jul 19, 2020, 23:02 Dmitry Gutov <dgutov@yandex.ru> wrote:

> On 18.07.2020 04:54, Richard Stallman wrote:
> > We define an accessor defsubst for each of the data it contains.  We
> > document its meaning.  We define a constructor function, and document
> > the meaning of each argument.  We manipulate them always through those
> > functions.  Voilà!
>
> Here's a question that will perhaps help us solve this dispute.
>
> Consider the docstring of said constructor function. What should it say
> its return value is?
>

IMHO, a most reasonable way to answer this question, for any function, but
particularly for generic ones:

"Return an object which one can pass to/responds to 'foo' and 'bar', which
see".

It's pretty helpful already. If you can add things to be more helpful, like
mentioning a type (which may be just a deftype) you should, but oftentimes
duck typing and generic functions means you're better off talking in terms
of operations.

In the docstring of methods of the generic functions you can be more
specific as to how the object returned responds to foo and bar.

This is fundamentally different from the  Java OO paradigm. In Common Lisp,
function is king.

But generic functions are not at all the only way to successfully design
abstractions in CL. IME of about 15 years, they're good because they mix
well with defclass via method combinations (of which Emacs's version of
generics only has the one). Method combinations "understand" the object
hierarchy. When you're not using them with defclass, they become so-so, on
par or sometimes even slightly behind many other techniques.

As a very rough rule of thumb, if you're not using 'call-next-method'
anywhere, or don't see a good reason why, you've probably overengineered it.

PS: i'm just replying to this bit of context, no idea how it fits in the
general discussion and whose position this helps, if anyone's...

João

>