The Jabberwocky documentation claims that it supports GCL on Unix, but
not on Windows. SLIME doesn't support GCL at all. Portable Hemlock
doesn't appear to have been tested on GCL. ILISP supports GCL, but the
archives indicate that people have a lowered opinion of ILISP nowadays?
What would people recommend for a GCL IDE?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
You want to write a game using Common Lisp in Windows. You have three
choices:
- Lispworks
- Allegro
- Corman Lisp
The criteria for evaluation are as follows:
- Cost
- Speed
- Stability
- ANSI compliance
- Capabilities of FFI
- Editor support
- Cross platform support
- Vendor support
- Library support
Evaluation of Corman Lisp:
- Cost: Corman is by far the least expensive.
- Speed: Corman is the slowest of the three
- Capabilities of FFI: Corman has a really strong FFI.
- Stability: When using Emacs and Slime, Corman seems very stable.
- ANSI Compliance: Corman trails behind Allegro and Lispworks.
- Editor support: Slime now supports Corman. Use Emacs, it rules.
- Cross platform development: Corman is Windows only.
- Vendor Support: I would guess Allegro, then Lispworks and then
Corman.
- Library support: Again, I'm guessing Allegro, then Lispworks then
Corman. However it is easy to add bindings to Corman for any kind of
library with a C API.
There.
(message (Hello 'Luke)
(you :wrote :on '(14 Jun 2005 12:08:12 -0700))
(
LC> You want to write a game using Common Lisp in Windows. You have three
LC> choices:
LC> - Lispworks
LC> - Allegro
LC> - Corman Lisp
why ECL is not present?
and, what's wrong with clisp and gcl?
)
(With-best-regards '(Alex Mizrahi) :aka 'killer_storm)
"People who lust for the Feel of keys on their fingertips (c) Inity")
ECL was an oversight, it hit me a second after I posted.
Can clisp handle callbacks? The 3D graphics and sound libraries that I
have looked at all make very heavy use of all kinds of nasty callbacks,
passing function pointers around, calling functions within structs etc.
GCL, again, see my comment on clisp.
-Luke
Luke Crook wrote:
> ECL was an oversight, it hit me a second after I posted.
>
> Can clisp handle callbacks? The 3D graphics and sound libraries that I
> have looked at all make very heavy use of all kinds of nasty callbacks,
> passing function pointers around, calling functions within structs etc.
Now possibly better than any other Lisp, with the killer new FFI on
win32 and Linux. Last I heard, quite a few months ago, not yet on OSX.
eg, lambda forms can be callbacks. I think stuff like that was also
happening on cmucl/sbcl, but I do not track those.
--
Kenny
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"If you plan to enter text which our system might consider to be
obscene, check here to certify that you are old enough to hear the
resulting output." -- Bell Labs text-to-speech interactive Web page
"Kenny Tilton" <·······@nyc.rr.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
··························@twister.nyc.rr.com...
>
> ...
> Now possibly better than any other Lisp, with the killer new FFI on
> win32 and Linux.
> ...
Can you guide me to some reading about the killer new features?
Andreas
"Luke Crook" <····@balooga.com> writes:
> ECL was an oversight, it hit me a second after I posted.
>
> Can clisp handle callbacks? The 3D graphics and sound libraries that I
> have looked at all make very heavy use of all kinds of nasty callbacks,
> passing function pointers around, calling functions within structs etc.
I've never tested it but theres in clisp: ffi:def-call-in to define
call back entry points.
http://www.podval.org/~sds/clisp/impnotes/dffi.html#def-call-in
> GCL, again, see my comment on clisp.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Nobody can fix the economy. Nobody can be trusted with their finger
on the button. Nobody's perfect. VOTE FOR NOBODY.
Greetings!
"Luke Crook" <····@balooga.com> writes:
> ECL was an oversight, it hit me a second after I posted.
>
> Can clisp handle callbacks? The 3D graphics and sound libraries that I
> have looked at all make very heavy use of all kinds of nasty callbacks,
> passing function pointers around, calling functions within structs etc.
>
> GCL, again, see my comment on clisp.
>
gcl-tk, and if you check it out, please do so in cvs version Version_2_6_7pre
or later.
Take care,
> -Luke
>
--
Camm Maguire ····@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
I don't know about LW, but I've heard that Corman has native threads.
Allegro has native threads in Windows too (but not in Linux)
This may go under your speed component.
Luke Crook wrote:
> You want to write a game using Common Lisp in Windows. You have three
> choices:
> - Lispworks
> - Allegro
> - Corman Lisp
David L. Rager wrote:
> I don't know about LW, but I've heard that Corman has native threads.
> Allegro has native threads in Windows too (but not in Linux)
>
> This may go under your speed component.
I've yet to write a threaded application. My jury is still out on
threads. On a single CPU, threads don't actually make anything go
faster. They're just overhead, and also a source of debugging
frustration. They may make some programs easier to organize. I've read
articles by a good number of game developers over the years, and quite a
few have said to forget about threads, they just add complexity for no
benefit. Implementing a synchronous game is often easier in practice.
Of course, engineering methods advance with the times and the available
HW. The IBM Cell architecture would definitely need threads, since it's
got 8 subunits. Anyways, my attitude towards threads is I'll worry
about 'em when/if I see a good use for 'em.
Oh, and I don't like multiplayer or networked games, if that helps
explain my biases. Single player desktop is my design center.
Many people, when they're undergrads in computer science, go through a
"wow, threaded everything would be SOOOO kewl!!!" phase. Then they
learn that more threads doesn't mean more performance. That cools their
jets.
> Luke Crook wrote:
>
>> You want to write a game using Common Lisp in Windows. You have three
>> choices:
>> - Lispworks
>> - Allegro
>> - Corman Lisp
Actually, CLISP looks like a perfectly viable place to start, if not
finish. I expect I'd have to ship with one of the above compilers, if
CMUCL or SBCL doesn't get ported by then. In the interim, AH2CL
supports CLISP and demonstrates proof-of-concept for OpenGL bindings,
according to http://hocwp.free.fr/ah2cl/ . I haven't had time to
actually write any code yet though, as I'm in the endgame on this
signature gathering season.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
I won't spend more than 1 day configuring 1 thing.
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> Many people, when they're undergrads in computer science, go through a
> "wow, threaded everything would be SOOOO kewl!!!" phase. Then they
> learn that more threads doesn't mean more performance. That cools
> their jets.
Ah, but that's only because we don't have massively threaded
processors. ;-)
Only now start to appears 2-threaded processors. Programmers who
wrote threaded code will reap the benefits when they'll produce
multi-core processors (with multi>1000).
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never
stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and
neither do we. -- Georges W. Bush
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> The Jabberwocky documentation claims that it supports GCL on Unix, but
> not on Windows. SLIME doesn't support GCL at all. Portable Hemlock
> doesn't appear to have been tested on GCL. ILISP supports GCL, but
> the archives indicate that people have a lowered opinion of ILISP
> nowadays? What would people recommend for a GCL IDE?
ilisp. It was good enough for people to use for fifteen years or so,
and actually, it's quite nice once you've managed to set it up.
You could also try to make gcl slime-capable. I think there was a
message on the slime list from Helmut Eller that explained what's
missing for minimal gcl-support.
Andras
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in
message ·················@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> The Jabberwocky documentation claims that it supports GCL on Unix, but not
> on Windows. SLIME doesn't support GCL at all. Portable Hemlock doesn't
> appear to have been tested on GCL. ILISP supports GCL, but the archives
> indicate that people have a lowered opinion of ILISP nowadays? What would
> people recommend for a GCL IDE?
>
Good question.
Imagine for a moment that everyone is using a Windows desktop calculator
like program to do math. The paradigm is that it is a graphical
representation
of the handheld calculator.
Suppose that all information concerning the existence of symbolic math
progams that were
fully functional with GUI's and 2 and 3d plotting has been suppressed or
more correctly, omitted, by the desktop calculator software because such
programs were in use at research institutions in the early 90's but "fell
out of favor"
during the "AI winter" or <substitute you own make believe explanation
here>.
Meanwhile, a lucky few who used such programs scoff at the desktop
calculator
interface and glowingly describe what it was like to use the great symbolic
math programs of the past. Only they know the real power of what might be
being done on user's desktop as opposed to the prevailing notions of what is
useful.
The computers of today have plenty of power and memory to handle the load.
Such is the present situation with regard to Lisp vendors. Many seem to be
blindly following the pathetic "visual studio" (sic) concept, more correctly
named
"Visual Outsourcing Studio" and popularized by a prominent software
monopoly.
Unfortunately the real purpose of the VS Studio is to lock people into
proprietary
technologies but that is the stuff of another post.
A small group of people, experienced on REAL Lisp development environments,
have
slowly been posting pictures and information about what it was like to
develop
on REAL LISP work enviornments and that knowledge is gradually passing thru
the web.
Hidden away in various byways on the web are pieces of code, fragments and
half forgotten
manuals about Lisp Machines, Symbolics, TI Explorer
and others. The very names strikes fear into the Lisp vendors.
Which Lisp vendor, if any, will be the first to wake up and start consulting
these.
Who will dare to even mention that they will even try???
There once was, over a decade ago, very competent and powerful Lisp
development
environments and every day that passes more software developers become aware
of this power
and wonder why we cannot have it... all of it, NOW.
Jim Pannozzi
"Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>There once was, over a decade ago, very competent and powerful Lisp
>development
>environments and every day that passes more software developers become aware
>of this power
>and wonder why we cannot have it... all of it, NOW.
The past is often glorified, in hindsight. However, noone prevents you
from recreating such a development environment yourself, if you desire
so. Surely you won't get it "NOW" but if it is as productive as you
claim, surely others will help you, after realizing its potential?
mkb.
Matthias Buelow wrote:
> "Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>
>
>>There once was, over a decade ago, very competent and powerful Lisp
>>development
>>environments and every day that passes more software developers become aware
>>of this power
>>and wonder why we cannot have it... all of it, NOW.
>
>
> The past is often glorified, in hindsight. However, noone prevents you
> from recreating such a development environment yourself, if you desire
> so. Surely you won't get it "NOW" but if it is as productive as you
> claim, surely others will help you, after realizing its potential?
But why would they realize it, without proof? Even then, the proof is
very difficult. People are notorious for sticking to their ways. So
really, you are proposing that Takuon reproduce such IDEs
single-handedly, and drive them to maturity for a long time before
anyone else notices them. That's a lot of work and I wouldn't think
less of anyone who declines such work. It might be an appropriate
venture for a startup company, but I'll leave it to others to figure out
whether there's really a business model in that.
"Super environments" are a great idea, but what I want is much more basic:
- the software actually works
- the software has signs of life in terms of community support
- the software works in the toolchain I want to use
- the software doesn't require hours and hours of configuration
- the software has some proven utility to it, some people like using it
- the software is well documented
- the software doesn't require continuous reading of the docs to get
going with, i.e. you don't need one hand in the manual
GCL doesn't appear to be meeting these tests. Nor do people seem to
care about ILISP anymore. For my budget, on Windows this leaves me with
the following options:
CLISP + SLIME
CLISP + Jabberwocky
CLISP + VisualCLisp
Corman Lisp
Performance considerations would drive me straight to Corman, but I must
admit I have a mild curiosity about how slow CLISP might be, whether
SLIME or Jabberwocky are any good, and how difficult it is to port
between Common Lisp implementations. If I do go with CLISP, it's an
interim solution, in anticipation of a port to a natively compiled Lisp.
CLISP looks a little futzy to set up, but probably not insurmountable.
My patience for futzing is pretty low now. Increasingly I feel that my
available time for such futzing is expired. 1 day getting 1 thing to
work is the absolute maximum I'll spend on anything anymore. And every
time it actually takes me 1 day, instead of 1..2 hours, it puts a bad
taste in my mouth about the toolchain. Enough bad taste and I spit it
out, like Linux.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> - the software doesn't require continuous reading of the docs to get
> going with, i.e. you don't need one hand in the manual
Don't be afraid of documentation. Sleep with a copy of PCL under the
pillow.
-Luke
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
> CLISP looks a little futzy to set up, but probably not insurmountable.
CLISP turned out to be easier to set up on Windows than it first looked.
Initially it wasn't clear to me that a Windows binary was available,
and so I thought I was going to have to compile it from source on MinGW
and deal with underlying support libraries. Once I got the binary, it
looked like I'd have to do a number of configurations, but that's only
because the README put a lot of spurious verbiage in front of what you
actually need to do, which is run install.bat and you're pretty much
done. One of the cookbook pages suggested putting a _clisprc.lisp file
in your HOME directory and leaving it blank, so maybe I'll want / need
to configure something later, but it seems to be working for now.
Jabberwocky installed itself painlessly using CLISP, just had to tell it
where CLISP was.
VisualCLisp found CLISP automatically. However, it doesn't appear to be
a full-featured IDE.
SLIME installation was slightly futzy, because the README mentioned
setting inferior-lisp-program but didn't say how or who owns it. The
.PDF documentation is clearer, showing it as yet-another-line to add to
~/.emacs. The trend, I think, is that open source projects don't tend
to synch their docs regarding Windows issues. Probably an artifact of
not very many Windows users, plus the usual Unixy culture of "everyone
does know / should know what to do already."
"M-x slime" also generates "Process inferior-lisp exited abnormally with
code 1." More futzing. Wonder if it's SLIME or XEmacs?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
I won't spend more than 1 day configuring 1 thing.
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
> "M-x slime" also generates "Process inferior-lisp exited abnormally with
> code 1." More futzing. Wonder if it's SLIME or XEmacs?
It took me 1 hour to figure out that the following magic was needed in
~/.emacs:
(setq inferior-lisp-program "D:/lang/clisp-2.33.2/clisp.bat")
I would have thought it more natural to target an .exe than a .bat, but
apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on various
systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open source
stuff to work...
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
I won't spend more than 1 day configuring 1 thing.
Brandon J. Van Every schrieb:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>>
>> "M-x slime" also generates "Process inferior-lisp exited abnormally
>> with code 1." More futzing. Wonder if it's SLIME or XEmacs?
>
>
> It took me 1 hour to figure out that the following magic was needed in
> ~/.emacs:
>
> (setq inferior-lisp-program "D:/lang/clisp-2.33.2/clisp.bat")
>
> I would have thought it more natural to target an .exe than a .bat, but
> apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
> having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on various
> systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
> criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open source
> stuff to work...
I must admit that the first time I installed clisp+emacs+slime manually
it took me one hour too. I did it at the same time as a friend of mine.
In fact he also used the clisp.bat. But if you look into it, you will
find out that you can also do it another way:
(setq inferior-lisp-program "D:/Programme/clisp-2.33.1/full/lisp.exe -M
D:/Programme/clisp-2.33.1/full/lispinit.mem")
Andr�
--
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> but apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
> having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on
> various systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
> criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open
> source stuff to work...
Don't let a few thousand bucks discourage you from buying a commercial
Lisp system for Windows and painlessly install it by just running
setup.exe.
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools:
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>
>> but apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
>> having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on
>> various systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
>> criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open
>> source stuff to work...
>
> Don't let a few thousand bucks discourage you from buying a commercial
> Lisp system for Windows and painlessly install it by just running
> setup.exe.
Indeed, $1,100 as opposed to 2 years' worth of suffering and public
humiliation doesn't seem like much, especially since he's going to need to
cough it up anyhow.
Paolo Amoroso wrote:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>
>
>>but apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
>>having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on
>>various systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
>>criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open
>>source stuff to work...
>
>
> Don't let a few thousand bucks discourage you from buying a commercial
> Lisp system for Windows and painlessly install it by just running
> setup.exe.
Oh, I doubt I'd be discouraged *eventually*, but if I acquire that kind
of money *now*, my landlord has got dibs on it, followed by a bankruptcy
lawyer. I'm surprised that I've been able to spend so long learning so
many things that don't make me any money at all. Computer technology is
really bad. I know people are going to pipe up and say it's all my
fault, but really, computer technology is really bad. We're in the
stone ages guys.
We're also in a cycle, I hope. Once upon a time, lone wolves did things
from their bedroom and made a lot of money on them. Fun things, like
games. Well, I don't accept that all things must be huge budget now. I
want the return of the garage, and I'm going to make it happen.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
T-shirt that landed someone a job: "I'm not an asshole,
I'm a Shaper!" http://www.teams.org.uk/shaper.htm
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in
message news:d8rfu2
>We're also in a cycle, I hope. Once upon a time, lone wolves did things
>from their bedroom and made a lot of money on them. Fun things, like
>games. Well, I don't accept that all things must be huge budget now. I
>want the return of the garage, and I'm going to make it happen.
>--
>Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
>Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Yes, damnit yes!! Exactly right.
A little too much emphasis is being placed on "collaborative" development
and "Teams" when the breakthroughs usually happen from one individual
developer.
Jim
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in
message ·················@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> Paolo Amoroso wrote:
>> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>>
>>
>>>but apparently that's not the CLISP drill. So, the weakness is in not
>>>having documented examples of how to configure various lisps on
>>>various systems. At least SLIME is still within the bounds of my .sig
>>>criterion. People wonder why I wasted 2 years trying to get open
>>>source stuff to work...
>>
>>
>> Don't let a few thousand bucks discourage you from buying a commercial
>> Lisp system for Windows and painlessly install it by just running
>> setup.exe.
>
> Oh, I doubt I'd be discouraged *eventually*, but if I acquire that kind of
> money *now*, my landlord has got dibs on it, followed by a bankruptcy
> lawyer. I'm surprised that I've been able to spend so long learning so
> many things that don't make me any money at all. Computer technology is
> really bad. I know people are going to pipe up and say it's all my fault,
> but really, computer technology is really bad. We're in the stone ages
> guys.
>
> We're also in a cycle, I hope. Once upon a time, lone wolves did things
> from their bedroom and made a lot of money on them. Fun things, like
> games. Well, I don't accept that all things must be huge budget now. I
> want the return of the garage, and I'm going to make it happen.
>
> --
> Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>
> T-shirt that landed someone a job: "I'm not an asshole,
> I'm a Shaper!" http://www.teams.org.uk/shaper.htm
Takuon Soho wrote:
>
> A little too much emphasis is being placed on "collaborative" development
> and "Teams" when the breakthroughs usually happen from one individual
> developer.
Actually I think the corporate emphasis on teams and replaceable workers
is one of the main things that holds technology back. Nobody has an
incentive to make products that empower individuals and help them get
massive amounts of work done. Instead, companies solve their problems
with capital and outsourcing to third world countries. Companies want
cogs, not loose cannons.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Taking risk where others will not.
>SLIME installation was slightly futzy, because the README mentioned
>setting inferior-lisp-program but didn't say how or who owns it. The
>.PDF documentation is clearer, showing it as yet-another-line to add to
>~/.emacs. The trend, I think, is that open source projects don't tend
>to synch their docs regarding Windows issues. Probably an artifact of
>not very many Windows users, plus the usual Unixy culture of "everyone
>does know / should know what to do already."
CLisp+Emacs+SLIME is incredibly easy to set up on windows.
1) Go to this website: http://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/
2) Download the windows installers (base-installer and clisp-installer)
and run them.
3) Find LispBox in your windows start menu and start coding your game.
Don't forget that last step. Try to get a prototype done by next week
so we can try it out. By the way, what sort of game are you making?
Brandon J. Van Every <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
>But why would they realize it, without proof? Even then, the proof is
>very difficult. People are notorious for sticking to their ways. So
>really, you are proposing that Takuon reproduce such IDEs
>single-handedly, and drive them to maturity for a long time before
>anyone else notices them. That's a lot of work and I wouldn't think
No, I just was mildly annoyed by his bidding that companies fulfill
his wish "NOW". It's amazing that people always cry for certain
things to be done but when it comes back to them, they don't want
to do it either. Now, doesn't that sound familiar?
>CLISP looks a little futzy to set up, but probably not insurmountable.
>My patience for futzing is pretty low now. Increasingly I feel that my
>available time for such futzing is expired. 1 day getting 1 thing to
>work is the absolute maximum I'll spend on anything anymore. And every
>time it actually takes me 1 day, instead of 1..2 hours, it puts a bad
>taste in my mouth about the toolchain. Enough bad taste and I spit it
>out, like Linux.
Well. It's probably a safe bet how your encounter with clisp will
turn out. :)
mkb.
"Matthias Buelow" <···@incubus.de> wrote in message
···················@news.dfncis.de...
>No, I just was mildly annoyed by his bidding that companies fulfill
>his wish "NOW". It's amazing that people always cry for certain
>things to be done but when it comes back to them, they don't want
>to do it either. Now, doesn't that sound familiar?
A bit too strident for you, eh?
Well good. It was intended to be.
How can a powerful language like Lisp have such crappy development
environments but once upon a time have great ones whoose powers
have been largely forgotten. Go ahead, read the other posts in this
thread about how it takes them an hour to set up their development
environments.
Hey, I'm just some idiot whoose been wasting his time with C++ for 10 years,
I just turned to Lisp out of realization that it seemed to have the
accessible
power to do what I wanted - and I'm a bigger idiot than most for taking
so long to see it.
As a Lisp learner, I can't do the stuff I want NOW but I can still wonder
why
NOT NOW.
Those who acquiesce in present circumstance are doomed to stay there.
Each of us is free to accept the current development environments or,
at the very least, to dream of more - to use the desktop calculator and
be content or to seek out the metaphorical equivalent of Maxima and see what
vistas
that may open.
Jim
"Matthias Buelow" <···@incubus.de> wrote in message
···················@news.dfncis.de...
> Brandon J. Van Every <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
>
>>But why would they realize it, without proof? Even then, the proof is
>>very difficult. People are notorious for sticking to their ways. So
>>really, you are proposing that Takuon reproduce such IDEs
>>single-handedly, and drive them to maturity for a long time before
>>anyone else notices them. That's a lot of work and I wouldn't think
>
> No, I just was mildly annoyed by his bidding that companies fulfill
> his wish "NOW". It's amazing that people always cry for certain
> things to be done but when it comes back to them, they don't want
> to do it either. Now, doesn't that sound familiar?
>
>>CLISP looks a little futzy to set up, but probably not insurmountable.
>>My patience for futzing is pretty low now. Increasingly I feel that my
>>available time for such futzing is expired. 1 day getting 1 thing to
>>work is the absolute maximum I'll spend on anything anymore. And every
>>time it actually takes me 1 day, instead of 1..2 hours, it puts a bad
>>taste in my mouth about the toolchain. Enough bad taste and I spit it
>>out, like Linux.
>
> Well. It's probably a safe bet how your encounter with clisp will
> turn out. :)
>
> mkb.
"Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>
> How can a powerful language like Lisp have such crappy development
> environments but once upon a time have great ones whoose powers have
> been largely forgotten.
Because many of those environments were proprietary and died with their
makers. That's the fundamental reason. Had they been free, then their
users would have ported them to new platforms and they would still be in
use.
Look at emacs: it survives after twenty-some years despite its flaws
precisely because it is free. It's powerful enough, and its users port
it to each new OS and language because they can.
--
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
An environment that puts women unwillingly at the disposal of men is
never an argument for equality. It is quite vividly the opposite.
--Kathleen Parker
Robert Uhl <·········@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
> "Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
> >
> > How can a powerful language like Lisp have such crappy development
> > environments but once upon a time have great ones whoose powers have
> > been largely forgotten.
>
> Because many of those environments were proprietary and died with their
> makers. That's the fundamental reason. Had they been free, then their
> users would have ported them to new platforms and they would still be in use.
Those wonderful environments only existed
because they were proprietary in the first place.
Despite what you might have been told by certain
historical revisionists, they were created by highly
motivated talented people who wanted to make lots of money.
Instead of reciting crazy dogma, ponder this: Why hasn't anyone
in the 20 years since that time, using the vast resources of the
free programmers) managed to duplicate and exceed that environment?
Extra credit question: Why is this so, even when the leader of the
free software foundation, who had personal detailed knowledge of
such environments, stated up front that he wanted to accomplish this?
"Christopher C. Stacy" <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote in message
··················@news.dtpq.com...
>Instead of reciting crazy dogma, ponder this: Why hasn't anyone
>in the 20 years since that time, using the vast resources of the
>free programmers) managed to duplicate and exceed that environment?
>Extra credit question: Why is this so, even when the leader of the
>free software foundation, who had personal detailed knowledge of
>such environments, stated up front that he wanted to accomplish this?
Because I believe there has been a complete misdirection of focus,
a drawing of attention, if you will, away from those kinds of
highly specialized, highly productive environments towards the
Visual dumbbell type of environment which today exists as a kind of
artificial skin graft or growth on the host operating system
(Windows or Linux for example)
rather than as a symbiotic parasite as it should be. This could be
seen as early as Visual Studio 5 and 6, where a primitive and stupid
windowing system, actually the result of a shortcoming in operating
systems design, was hailed as a "feature" and praised as a hallmark of the
"Visual"
development system, cleverly covering up what any experienced developer
could see - that the MDI or "multiple document interface" became useless
the moment one embarked on a complicated project with more than a few
modules-
one would spend more time moving the little windows around in the one big
window than was worth the trouble. The result was a de facto exodus
to outside editors, such as Emacs, to do the serious work and then relying
on the "Visual" development environment to do the menial task
of compilation and linkage (most did that from Emacs too!!).
Has collective intelligence in the world of computer science gone down
in the last 10 years?? If not, than can not the University graduates
recall how to do bit blits, use microcode and design both operating systems
and environments close to the hardware or are they to run trembling and
hide under
the bed because some big outfits and clever people already tried it
and supposedly failed?
Several things are certain. The manuals are out there on the web as are
the reports
and stories of those who used the Lisp machines. The hardware of today is
at least
as good as that of 10 years ago and the amount of memory we have available
is
far greater than what anyone could have dreamt of then?
Perhaps the folks who got copies of the TI Explorer Lisp code in its final
days might come forward
and ask TI to release it - if nothing else, their response to a decade old
abandoned project
might be interesting.
As for the historical revisionists, one might draw some insight from the
case of
Dr. Schelter. His patience won out over the Dept. of Energy and they
finally
allowed the source code to an early version of the MIT Symbolic Math effort
to be released and he then spent some years getting it into releasable
shape.
Dedicated and thankful enthusiasts rebuilt it to run on modern systems and
it remains
today, publicly available and downloadable to any who wish to download and
use it.
And this, despite the fact that a proprietary company marketed a similar
tool,
perhaps more polished and capable, but that company later failed.
I suspect a great many of the "proprietary" projects had their origins in
publicly funded projects,
many of them derivatives of the "cold war" research era. Researching that
might take some doing,
and perhaps even some freedom of information forms but might ultimately
prove interesting.
Thanks
Jim Pannozzi
"Christopher C. Stacy" <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote in message
··················@news.dtpq.com...
> Robert Uhl <·········@NOSPAMgmail.com> writes:
>
>> "Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>> >
>> > How can a powerful language like Lisp have such crappy development
>> > environments but once upon a time have great ones whoose powers have
>> > been largely forgotten.
>>
>> Because many of those environments were proprietary and died with their
>> makers. That's the fundamental reason. Had they been free, then their
>> users would have ported them to new platforms and they would still be in
>> use.
>
> Those wonderful environments only existed
> because they were proprietary in the first place.
> Despite what you might have been told by certain
> historical revisionists, they were created by highly
> motivated talented people who wanted to make lots of money.
>
> Instead of reciting crazy dogma, ponder this: Why hasn't anyone
> in the 20 years since that time, using the vast resources of the
> free programmers) managed to duplicate and exceed that environment?
> Extra credit question: Why is this so, even when the leader of the
> free software foundation, who had personal detailed knowledge of
> such environments, stated up front that he wanted to accomplish this?
Takuon Soho wrote:
> This could be
> seen as early as Visual Studio 5 and 6, where a primitive and stupid
> windowing system, actually the result of a shortcoming in operating
> systems design, was hailed as a "feature" and praised as a hallmark of the
> "Visual" development system,
What, in contrast, is an example of an advanced and intelligent
windowing system?
> cleverly covering up what any experienced developer
> could see - that the MDI or "multiple document interface" became useless
> the moment one embarked on a complicated project with more than a few
> modules-
> one would spend more time moving the little windows around in the one big
> window than was worth the trouble. The result was a de facto exodus
> to outside editors, such as Emacs, to do the serious work and then relying
> on the "Visual" development environment to do the menial task
> of compilation and linkage (most did that from Emacs too!!).
Ok, so I think you're saying that early VS had crippled window tileing.
What about now? I'm not quite getting your point, as "futzing my
windows" has never been a problem in my VS usage. Maybe that depends on
my particular usage.
> Has collective intelligence in the world of computer science gone down
> in the last 10 years?? If not, than can not the University graduates
> recall how to do bit blits, use microcode and design both operating systems
> and environments close to the hardware or are they to run trembling and
> hide under
> the bed because some big outfits and clever people already tried it
> and supposedly failed?
Are you saying that the performance of windowing UIs is inadequate and
needs optimization? I don't consider even the Java-based Eclipse to be
problematic on my 866 MHz Pentium III with GeForce4 Ti card.
Are you saying that designing a windowing UIs on a clean slate, very
close to HW, is necessary and desireable? Why? Why not just write on
top of the lowest windowing level currently available?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
T-shirt that landed someone a job: "I'm not an asshole,
I'm a Shaper!" http://www.teams.org.uk/shaper.htm
From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> What, in contrast, is an example of an advanced and intelligent windowing
> system?
Google for descriptions of what it was like to develop on the Lisp machines.
See the link I mention below.
> Ok, so I think you're saying that early VS had crippled window tileing.
> What about now? I'm not quite getting your point, as "futzing my windows"
> has never been a problem in my VS usage. Maybe that depends on my
> particular usage.
The point is the whole idea of Visual Studio being adequate
and not whether some version of it was better than another.
If one thinks there is a better way, then search for it, or build it.
But there appears, at least from everything I have read so far,
that there once were development environments whoose
"intelligence" was at a higher level, or seemed to be, compared
to todays typical development tools. There also appears to be
(until now) some kind of information blackout, almost as though
mentioning this topic were somehow politically incorrect and
this attitude depends on our ignorance of what those older development
were all about. All I'm trying to say is let's question both what the Lisp
(and other language)
vendors are selling and what are the commonly accepted features
of our development environment. Let's raise the bar by pointing to
those older Lisp machines whoose capabilities and powers seem to have
been so conveniently forgotten.
> Are you saying that the performance of windowing UIs is inadequate and
> needs optimization? I don't consider even the Java-based Eclipse to be
> problematic on my 866 MHz Pentium III with GeForce4 Ti card.
Performance? Not exactly, I'm talking about something more fundamental.
Intelligence. How intelligent is the development environment
and windowing UI. That is the key.
Forget about Eclipse and Visual Studio
for a moment and just go over to
http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
and read with the question in the back of your mind - is there anything here
that I could use now if it were available to me or that I would like
to have and use - if there is not, return contented
to your current environment.
If, on the other hand, you find some exciting
things that you wish you could have and use from these old systems, then
you can wonder, as I do, on what it would take to get them on PC's
and why the Lisp vendors don't seem to be interested.
> Are you saying that designing a windowing UIs on a clean slate, very close
> to HW, is necessary and desireable? Why? Why not just write on top of
> the lowest windowing level currently available?
Maybe. I've heard that some are working on a project, based on Lisp
to do just that.
And again, I'm just saying - let's question commonly held expectations,
particularly when an earlier era seems to have gone so far with a different
tack.
What would it take to have some of those things NOW?
Jim Pannozzi
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 8:31 PM
Subject: Re: GCL IDE on Windows
> Takuon Soho wrote:
>> This could be
>> seen as early as Visual Studio 5 and 6, where a primitive and stupid
>> windowing system, actually the result of a shortcoming in operating
>> systems design, was hailed as a "feature" and praised as a hallmark of
>> the "Visual" development system,
>
> What, in contrast, is an example of an advanced and intelligent windowing
> system?
>
>> cleverly covering up what any experienced developer
>> could see - that the MDI or "multiple document interface" became useless
>> the moment one embarked on a complicated project with more than a few
>> modules-
>> one would spend more time moving the little windows around in the one big
>> window than was worth the trouble. The result was a de facto exodus
>> to outside editors, such as Emacs, to do the serious work and then
>> relying
>> on the "Visual" development environment to do the menial task
>> of compilation and linkage (most did that from Emacs too!!).
>
> Ok, so I think you're saying that early VS had crippled window tileing.
> What about now? I'm not quite getting your point, as "futzing my windows"
> has never been a problem in my VS usage. Maybe that depends on my
> particular usage.
>
>> Has collective intelligence in the world of computer science gone down
>> in the last 10 years?? If not, than can not the University graduates
>> recall how to do bit blits, use microcode and design both operating
>> systems
>> and environments close to the hardware or are they to run trembling and
>> hide under
>> the bed because some big outfits and clever people already tried it
>> and supposedly failed?
>
> Are you saying that the performance of windowing UIs is inadequate and
> needs optimization? I don't consider even the Java-based Eclipse to be
> problematic on my 866 MHz Pentium III with GeForce4 Ti card.
>
> Are you saying that designing a windowing UIs on a clean slate, very close
> to HW, is necessary and desireable? Why? Why not just write on top of
> the lowest windowing level currently available?
>
> --
> Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>
> T-shirt that landed someone a job: "I'm not an asshole,
> I'm a Shaper!" http://www.teams.org.uk/shaper.htm
"Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>for a moment and just go over to
>http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
>and read with the question in the back of your mind - is there anything here
>that I could use now if it were available to me or that I would like
>to have and use - if there is not, return contented
>to your current environment.
The page is mostly hardware stuff. From the little software-related
points, two seem to be most prominent:
- bad network code,
- a single address space (i.e., no kind of security or crash
resilience at all)
sounds like an Amiga to me. Although it might've been a sweet machine
at its time, I doubt it's of much use today.
mkb.
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 17:12:15 +0200, Matthias Buelow <···@incubus.de> wrote:
> "Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
>
>>http://fare.tunes.org/LispM.html
>
> The page is mostly hardware stuff. From the little software-related
> points, two seem to be most prominent:
>
> - bad network code,
> - a single address space (i.e., no kind of security or crash
> resilience at all)
>
> sounds like an Amiga to me.
In order not to embarrass yourself in public you should avoid talking
about things you've no idea about.
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
>> The page is mostly hardware stuff. From the little software-related
>> points, two seem to be most prominent:
>>
>> - bad network code,
>> - a single address space (i.e., no kind of security or crash
>> resilience at all)
>>
>> sounds like an Amiga to me.
>
>In order not to embarrass yourself in public you should avoid talking
>about things you've no idea about.
Hehe.. sorry for stepping on your pet nostalgic glorification.
mkb.
>sounds like an Amiga to me. Although it might've been a sweet machine
>at its time, I doubt it's of much use today.
The Amiga was a very sweet machine for people interested in computers.
There were even a couple of LISPs for it, as I recall. Although the
hardware was cool for it's custom chipset and the multi-tasking capability,
it was the user and programmer community that made it so amazing. I've
never seen an effort quite like it.
The Amiga had an operating system that supported a windowed environment. I
have the distinct feeling from this thread, and from some of the touches
I've made to the topics indicated in the thread, that there are many people
who feel like there are environments which are more conducive to
productivity (at least editing and programming productivity) than what we
have become accustomed to in modern windowed operating systems. No one is
suggesting we go back into the past, only that we use it for what it has to
offer, and to keep an open mind about what might come to be.
I got to look over the shoulder of a guy named 'Kodiac' Burns as he worked
on the last bits of the Amiga RAM: drive. It was in assembler--and he made
it all look sooo easy.
"Joe Manby" <······@alltel.net> writes:
>I got to look over the shoulder of a guy named 'Kodiac' Burns as he worked
>on the last bits of the Amiga RAM: drive. It was in assembler--and he made
>it all look sooo easy.
No offense intended; I know that the Amiga was a fine machine. I'm
pretty sure that the various Lisp machines also were (although not
quite as commercially successful as the Amiga). I myself have started
programming on CBM 8-bit critters (c64, c128d) and I know people who
to this date claim that the C128 is a better machine than anything
else that followed, including the latest 3GHz PCs. Therefore I always
look at people a bit sceptically and bemusedly, when they claim that
"in the past, everything was much better". It's too easy to get your
memory clouded by some exaggerated glorification of the past. And now
please excuse me, I have to wipe the dust off my VAXstation..
mkb.
"Takuon Soho" <···@somwhere.net> writes:
> Because [....]
I started a lengthy response to your comments,
but after six hours of writing it, I've decided
to just resign for now. I've tried to say a few
things to get people to think about some issues,
and unfortunately that's all I can afford to
contribute at this time.
We are coming from such different worlds that it is
difficult for me to know where to begin.
Let me complement you for having some appreciation that
there really was something better, before the current
generation of computer software. But your understanding
of quite how that came to be, what it was like, and where
it was going technically, is a little bit confused.
I will also advise that as a general strategy,
or specifically concerning the Lisp Machine,
looking for the Government to take and distribute
certain old software, and use that as the basis
for the future, is a waste of time. That's not
going to be a very good way to learn from the past
(If you're interested in the prototype Lisp Machine software,
I think it's available, at least to the extent that it has
been preserved. Someone even has an emulator available.
Google this newsgroup to find out where to get it.
But that's not the Lisp Machine software that you see
people here are actually reminiscing about.
The really good stuff was purely commercial.)
I hope to write something about all this, but not on
a newsgroup. And not this week, for sure.
This hopefully concludes my involvement in these various
subthreads. Before getting sucked into the meta-issues,
my only real point was to suggest that Linux, or at least
Debian Sarge, turns out not to be a very good desktop OS.
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) writes:
> This hopefully concludes my involvement in these various
> subthreads. Before getting sucked into the meta-issues,
> my only real point was to suggest that Linux, or at least
> Debian Sarge, turns out not to be a very good desktop OS.
But who needs a desktop? We want programming workstations around here! :-)
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
I need a new toy.
Tail of black dog keeps good time.
Pounce! Good dog! Good dog!
Takuon Soho <···@somwhere.net> wrote:
>As a Lisp learner, I can't do the stuff I want NOW but I can still wonder
>why
>NOT NOW.
Why can't you?
>Those who acquiesce in present circumstance are doomed to stay there.
That's usually true.
>Each of us is free to accept the current development environments or,
>at the very least, to dream of more - to use the desktop calculator and
>be content or to seek out the metaphorical equivalent of Maxima and see what
>vistas
>that may open.
I don't understand the correlation you make between desktop environments
and Lisp programming.
mkb.
On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 15:02:12 GMT, <···@somwhere.net> wrote:
>
> There once was, over a decade ago, very competent and powerful Lisp
> development environments and every day that passes more software
> developers become aware of this power and wonder why we cannot have
> it... all of it, NOW.
>
> Jim Pannozzi
I don't wonder why, I just LUST. Maybe this is something that the new
Google billionaires would fund...
--
The LOOP construct is really neat, it's got a lot of knobs to turn!
Don't push the yellow one on the bottom.