6:06:33beach`It's a bit more complicated for things like classes and generic functions. There is an entire book written about how to get performance out of those.
6:06:52beach`The Art of the Metaobject Protocol. Or AMOP for short.
6:07:41lucarsomebody on a forum replied like this:
6:07:42lucarANSI CL allows functions that are in the source file (actually compilation unit) to use more efficient calling; they don't have to go through the global symbol function binding. The idea is that compilation units are replaced at once, rather than individual functions. Call optimizing behavior can be overridden for individual functions by declaim-ing them notinlin
6:07:42beach`Common Lisp guarantees that, when a class is altered, the instances are updated.
6:12:01beach`If F an G are both in the compilation unit and F calls G, then both F and G are updated when the new unit is loaded, but F might use a different calling convention to call G.
6:12:05lucarof all the objects in the compilation unit
6:12:16lucarthe compiler starts to how-swap from the leaf objects right?