In article <··········@grandcanyon.binc.net>
······@mailbag.com "William A. Barnett-Lewis" writes:
> We have been specific in saying over and over. Those of us who have to program
> for the PC _need_ a truely windows aware Lisp: we need OCX capability, true
> OLE compatability, dynamic linking to the system's DLLs, and for a price
> somewhere low side of $500. Until this happens, Lisp will remain what it is:
> a very good language for building huge monolithic vertical apps on large
> systems. And I'll still be stuck with Visual Basic because my wife and I happen > to like to eat evry day.
Indeed. We need these things because our competitors use them.
If we don't also use them, then we lose our competitive edge.
Developing for Windows is almost entirely a race to use the
latest tools. It's scary.
No wonder so few Windows developers use Lisp. Even if LispWorks
and ACL for Windows supported all the latest SDKs from MS, most
Windows developers might still ignore them, simply because they're
too busy trying to keep up with the tools they're already using.
Switching to Lisp would give them no edge at all, as they'd first
have to learn a whole new language. VB only succeeded because it
offered a better way of developing for _Windows_ - in many other
respects it offers _less_ than C++.
We're in the privileged position of knowing Lisp in spite of this.
In my case, it was because I discovered Lisp whilst unemployed.
I had the time and the motivation to learn more about it, but I
suspect that such curiousity as mine may be rare amoung other PC
(DOS & Windows) developers.
I've been trying to stir up some people here, too if there were
people like myself, dissatisfied with what the current crop of
Lisp implementations (for Windows) offer. It appears that either
most of us prefer to remain silent, or most Lisp programmers
really do want the kind of Lisps that are available.
Right now, I'd love a Visual Scheme (see Visual Prolog, Visual
Basic, Visual C++, and even Visual J++). It should be possible,
but if somebody were to tell me that it just wouldn't be viable
commercially, then I'd understand. However, that's not what I've
been told. Instead, I got the message that this is the wrong
way to use Lisp. <sigh>
Roll on Dylan. It's more likely that Dylan programmers will be
able to look at this issue with more open minds. After all,
wasn't Dylan intended to introduce a few new ideas into Lisp?
That's all I'm trying to do (in a much more modest way), by
asking some questions about the lack of interest in fully
exploiting a certain platform.
Is that such a strange thing to want to do?
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