fundamentalist engineering

3.18: adda/fundamentalist engineering:

. seems portable lang's always have a
problem with not really being that portable
due to diff's between platforms
in services or features .
. the worst cases are when most platforms
support a feature
so then the lang binds to it directly:
eg, environment var's (en'vars)
then on a platform like ppc,
that doesn't support en'vars,
the lang's manual must explain
that any code using en'vars will not work!?
. the way to handle cross-platform variation
is to always be using
thick rather than thin bindings .
. the thick binding would make sure that
some reusable set of lang features
could be doing the same job as
a dedicated en'var binding .

. en'vars are differing from other files
how?
. their format is a dictionary(string->sting);
one per user acct .
. if you'd never heard of en'vars before
you could be clued into their existence by
the lang's platform resources file
which dynamically lists
what is currently available
(special files, mounted volumes,
service api's, gui's, etc) .
. in terms of the lang's fundamental features,
en'vars would be globals
shared among all app's
that are acting as implicit param's .
. every platform can have an en'var
because when a platform doesn't natively provide them,
the lang already has the generic tools
that can implement and declare them .
. the key to portability then
is lisp's way of
using symbolics fundamentally:
finding the elements or atoms
from which all molecules can be defined .