[Vm-dev] Re: Immutability, newspeak (was: Vm-dev post from jbaptiste.arnaud@gmail.com requires approval)

[Andreas Raab]

On 6/8/2010 7:41 AM, David T. Lewis wrote:
> What do the VM developers think with respect adopting the VM changes?
> The immutability bit is a scarce resource. Is it OK to allocate it
> for this purpose or are there likely to be other projects interested
> in using it for other reasons?

Honestly, I don't thinnk the immutability bit carries its weight here. 
There's some fun stuff you can do with it, for sure, but outside of 
*extremely* specialized applications (oodbs) there will be little to no 
use for it. At least I don't see where you'd make use of immutability in 
some random app that's not a database. If it were essentially free to 
add it, I wouldn't mind (like I said there's fun stuff that one can do) 
but given that we're talking about allocating a header bit I feel that 
there's just not enough mileage we get out of it...

Just my random $.02.

Cheers,
   - Andreas