Why should anyone spend the kind of money being
discussed here to get a LISP machine, or an
Ivory chip for a Mac, when all you need to do
is buy Apple Common Lisp for the Mac, for much
less? Then you will have all the functionality
of a LISP Machine and a Mac too.
Correct me if I'm wrong (gently, please), but
Apple Common Lisp used to be Allegro Common
Lisp, which was modelled after the Symbolics
Lisp Machines, and includes the inspector and
all the other nice development tools of the original
Symbolics 3600 series (and thus, the same stuff
that's on the Ivory chip). Therefore, all you're gaining
by purchasing the Ivory chip (or a Symbolics or Explorer
Lisp Machine) is speed. How much speed are you
really going to gain, as compared to how fast a Quadra
will run Apple Common Lisp? Is it worth the extra
$10K - $15K?
--Jim
In article <······················@cognet.ucla.edu> ······@tinman.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:
Why should anyone spend the kind of money being
discussed here to get a LISP machine, or an
Ivory chip for a Mac, when all you need to do
is buy Apple Common Lisp for the Mac, for much
less? Then you will have all the functionality
of a LISP Machine and a Mac too.
This discussion's gone pretty far afield, but this question's worth
answering. One of the reasons people want used Lispm's for home use
is not to do Lisp development but to hack on the machine for fun.
Some folks have spent a fair amount of effort getting to know the
internals of a given software architecture, and it's more fun to hack
on such a machine rather than learn the internals of ACL. Granted,
it's not the fastest piece of iron around, but that's not the point.
Case in point: I've got an 1186 and a Sun at home. They both run the
same Lisp software (Medley), and the Sun runs rings around the 1186.
However, if I'm doing some TCP/IP hacking, or want to hook up wierd
devices, or dink with the memory management, then I'm more likely to
do it on the 1186, since I can talk to the OS directly without
having to go through the Unix layer. I don't care if it's slower to
compile a system, I'm not doing this for profit, but for fun.
It's also a nostalgia kick...
...arun
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arun Welch
Lisp Hacker, Anzus Consulting
·····@cis.ohio-state.edu
······@tinman.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:
>Correct me if I'm wrong (gently, please), but
>Apple Common Lisp used to be Allegro Common
>Lisp, which was modelled after the Symbolics
>Lisp Machines, and includes the inspector and
>all the other nice development tools of the original
>Symbolics 3600 series (and thus, the same stuff
>that's on the Ivory chip). Therefore, all you're gaining
>by purchasing the Ivory chip (or a Symbolics or Explorer
>Lisp Machine) is speed.
First a confession: I've only used MCL 2.0 once or twice, and MCL
1.3.2+PCL for a brief period. So my remarks are >not< based on
anything like a complete understanding of the Apple environment.
That caveat out of the way:
It's not just speed, Genera still seems to be a more integrated
development environment. Perhaps it was just because I've always
hacked Lispm's with complete sources available, but it certainly seems
easier to meta-. your way around the Symbolics environment than around
the MCL one. I kept ending up in dead ends.
Also, the debugger on the LispM is a little more benign than MCL's;
past a certain point you end up in code where someone has stripped the
symbols out. Also, various types of run-time checks seem to get
eliminated in "production" code on MCL, meaning you don't get the same
type of robustness. Or is this just my imagination?
Also, the metering stuff on the Lispm that depended on the Meter Bit
(not the encapsulation stuff), was pretty useful. Admittedly, that's
just for a first cut, and after that, anything that depended on
encapsulation and such can be done just as well in MCL, I'm sure.
Also, I grew to like dynamic windows. I can't afford CLIM (but then,
I couldn't afford/justify getting even a cheap Lispm, either).
Does anyone miss the CP? (I guess that comes with CLIM, if someone did).
I know I'm not remembering all the differences (Unfortunately(?), it's
been years since I used a Lispm for more than 10 minutes, and I don't
use MCL). The truth is, I can't put my finger on all the reasons yet,
but in my brief, periodic, forays, MCL doesn't feel like a "full" lisp
yet. It could simply be that I'm complaining because on the Lispm you
could get your hands on the innards of the beast, and modify it.
("Hey! That will work if I just make this change to
SI:SEQUENCE-BREAK!"). Maybe that's all there is to it: if the MacOS
were written in Lisp, and you had the sources available in MCL, then
I'd be happy with it.
Who knows? I'm just rambling and whining, now. (Can you tell I'm
short on sleep?)
From: ········@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (Michael Greenwald)
Date: 27 Mar 92 23:27:43 GMT
······@tinman.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:
>Correct me if I'm wrong (gently, please), but
>Apple Common Lisp used to be Allegro Common
>Lisp, which was modelled after the Symbolics
>Lisp Machines, and includes the inspector and
>all the other nice development tools of the original
>Symbolics 3600 series (and thus, the same stuff
>that's on the Ivory chip). Therefore, all you're gaining
>by purchasing the Ivory chip (or a Symbolics or Explorer
>Lisp Machine) is speed.
It's not just speed, Genera still seems to be a more integrated
development environment. [...]
I know I'm not remembering all the differences.
The truth is, I can't put my finger on all the reasons yet,
but in my brief, periodic, forays, MCL doesn't feel like a "full" lisp
yet. It could simply be that I'm complaining because on the Lispm you
could get your hands on the innards of the beast, and modify it.
I've used it quite a bit, but mostly for personal hacking, not
"serious development", so I don't claim to have anything like complete
knowledge either. I'm quite happy with it for the price, but here are
some things it has (correct me if I'm wrong):
- No sources
- No built-in callers database (Mkant's stuff lets you build a
database for *user* code but there's no good MCL UI for it.)
- Far inferior debugger
- Far inferior editor (but the best emacs clone available for the Mac)
- No System Construction Tool (I think Mkant has something similar tho)
- No Generic Network System
- No "real" processes
- No command processor (yes, *I* miss it, although it would be less
useful on the Mac until some of the above are added. Death to the
Finder.)
That's all I can think of right now.
-Carl
--
Carl L. Gay ····@cs.uoregon.edu Home: (503) 345-1918
2422 Onyx Street, Eugene, OR 97403 Work: (503) 346-1759
In article <··················@darkwing.uoregon.edu> ····@darkwing.uoregon.edu writes:
[...]
> ······@tinman.cognet.ucla.edu (James Kroger) writes:
> >Correct me if I'm wrong (gently, please), but
> >Apple Common Lisp used to be Allegro Common
> >Lisp, which was modelled after the Symbolics
> >Lisp Machines, and includes the inspector and
> >all the other nice development tools of the original
> >Symbolics 3600 series (and thus, the same stuff
> >that's on the Ivory chip). Therefore, all you're gaining
> >by purchasing the Ivory chip (or a Symbolics or Explorer
> >Lisp Machine) is speed.
[Responses from Carl re advantages of Symbolics development environment].
Also, remember that the start of this thread was from a person who was
interested in getting a *used* LISP machine for personal use. In that vein,
recall that you can get a used 36xx Symbolics (from Symbolics, Great Eastern,
Crossfield [contacts posted earlier] and probably others) for $2-4K, with no
need to pay anything additional for license transfer fees.
I got the impression, perhaps erroneously, that the original poster was more
interested in whether he could get a neat development environment very cheaply
for experimenting with, than in what were the pros and cons of various more
expensive platforms for "serious" corporate development.
- Marty
(setf (need-p 'disclaimer) NIL)
····@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall) writes:
> I got the impression, perhaps erroneously, that the original poster was more
> interested in whether he could get a neat development environment very cheapl
> for experimenting with, than in what were the pros and cons of various more
> expensive platforms for "serious" corporate development.
As I think I set off this fire of discussion originally, yes, your
impression was correct. :)
-----
·······@wyvern.via.mind.org (Paul Williams)
The Wyvern's Nest (Lawrenceville, GA)