Experience with CommonLoops

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Abstract
CommonLoops is an object-oriented language embedded in Common Lisp. It is one of two such languages selected as starting points for the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) which is currently being designed as a standard object-oriented extension to Common Lisp. This paper reports on experiences using the existing Portable CommonLoops (PCL) implementation of CommonLoops. The paper is divided into two parts: a report on the development of a window system application using the CommonLoops programming language, and a description of the implementation of another object-oriented language (CommonObjects) on top of the CommonLoops metaclass kernel, paralleling the two aspects of CommonLoops: the programming language and the metaclass kernel. Usage of the novel features in CommonLoops is measured quantitatively, and performance figures comparing CommonLoops, CommonObjects on CommonLoops, and the native Lisp implementation of CommonObjects are presented. The paper concludes with a discussion about the importance of quantitative assessment for programming language development.