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We’re allotted 30
minutes for these presentations, less with time for questions, meaning that
we are allotted about the same amount time as an American television
situation comedy, including commercials.
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There was a time
during my misspent youth when I’d take this time to try to methodically
demonstrate to the twelve people in the room who already had the background
to really appreciate it just how diabolically / ingeniously clever this work
is. But given the nature, and the history of this work, I’m not going to do
that now.
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Instead, I’m going
to divide the talk into five sections. First, we’ll examine what multimethods
are, what they are not, and what they are good for. Then we’ll look at what
they look like. Next, we’ll look at what it means to implement the bulk of
one of the most interesting and refined metaobject architectures on top of
the other one. We’ll then explore our multimethod implementations, and their
relative performance. Finally, we’ll try to place this work in the context of
some of the broader currents flowing through the research community, and try
to gauge the enduring significance (if any) of all of this.
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Academics are
veritable novelty vampires. They crave that which is new, and research
contributions must usual pander to these appetites. This work is rather
unusual in that it is the culmination of line of research much of which was
already complete seven or eight years ago. From the fact that we are here at
all, one is tempted to conclude that this work must have aged well; that the
program committee must have seen something of enduring value here.
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I gather Scotsmen
are fond of washing down Caledonian cuisine like haggis with something they
call Single Malt Scotch, which, I’m told it tastes something like paint
thinner poured over a tire fire. I gather it tastes even worse when it is
fresh, and that it is somewhat more palatable after it has festered in an oak
barrel for several years. We presented a sneak preview of some of this work,
back when it was fresher, at ECOOP ’98. We hope you’ll find that time has
made it more palatable.
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