Yup. I like mine a lot. I didn't already have a Mac, but did run
Linux. There are times where stuff that "just works" on Linux, doesn't
on Mac. But nothing too arduous so far.
I use SBCL (thanks to Cyrus Harmon!) and ECL (you'll need the latest
CVS).
Running windowed programs from a console (like SDL) is a pain because
of the windowing system, but there are ways around that.
Cheers
Brad
bradb wrote:
> Yup. I like mine a lot. I didn't already have a Mac, but did run
> Linux. There are times where stuff that "just works" on Linux, doesn't
> on Mac. But nothing too arduous so far.
> I use SBCL (thanks to Cyrus Harmon!) and ECL (you'll need the latest
> CVS).
That's exactly my situation. No previous Mac, but running Linux.
What's it like getting slime, emacs, and so on running?
Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> bradb wrote:
> > Yup. I like mine a lot. I didn't already have a Mac, but did run
> > Linux. There are times where stuff that "just works" on Linux, doesn't
> > on Mac. But nothing too arduous so far.
> > I use SBCL (thanks to Cyrus Harmon!) and ECL (you'll need the latest
> > CVS).
>
> That's exactly my situation. No previous Mac, but running Linux.
>
> What's it like getting slime, emacs, and so on running?
I'm not on a MacBook, but I am using a Mac Mini with the Intel Core
Duo. Emacs comes with the system out of the box, but it's a console
emacs. You can, however, get a Cocoa Emacs from the Apple website. You
may need to search a bit. Regardless of the type (console/gui) you use,
Emacs seems to be the same on the Mac as on any unix/linux/bsd system
that I have used. Sometimes the key bindings are a bit messed up, but
that's fixable easily enough.
As for Lisp, I installed Fink and got CLISP running very easily, Guile
too. All in all I'm very pleased.
-Jason
I'm also running a Mac Mini core dual, just got it over the weekend. It
works out of the box. I had it plugged in and was running SBCL +
Aquamacs + Slime in an hour. It was literally plug and play (just
download the latest 0.9.11 SBCL OS X Intel distro).
It took me a week to figure out how to install emacs, slime, clisp, and
asdf tools on my windows machine, it took less than an hour on the new
Intel mac. And ASDF works out of the box, it's beautiful. I just type
(require 'asdf) and (require 'asdf-install) and everything is set,
nothing to download or setup.
It's so strange that in a week of working in windows I feel like I've
only done a day's work, and in a weekend on a mac I feel like I got a
week's work out of it. I feel like I've had this mac for a long time
and yet my package says it was delivered just last Friday. Anyone else
have this feeling?
-Jeff
On 2006-04-24 00:24:18 -0400, "Jason" <·······@gmail.com> said:
>
> Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
>> bradb wrote:
>>> Yup. I like mine a lot. I didn't already have a Mac, but did run
>>> Linux. There are times where stuff that "just works" on Linux, doesn't
>>> on Mac. But nothing too arduous so far.
>>> I use SBCL (thanks to Cyrus Harmon!) and ECL (you'll need the latest
>>> CVS).
>>
>> That's exactly my situation. No previous Mac, but running Linux.
>>
>> What's it like getting slime, emacs, and so on running?
>
> I'm not on a MacBook, but I am using a Mac Mini with the Intel Core
> Duo. Emacs comes with the system out of the box, but it's a console
> emacs. You can, however, get a Cocoa Emacs from the Apple website. You
> may need to search a bit. Regardless of the type (console/gui) you use,
> Emacs seems to be the same on the Mac as on any unix/linux/bsd system
> that I have used. Sometimes the key bindings are a bit messed up, but
> that's fixable easily enough.
>
> As for Lisp, I installed Fink and got CLISP running very easily, Guile
> too. All in all I'm very pleased.
>
> -Jason
From: Bill Atkins
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <87bquqsbbn.fsf@rpi.edu>
Jeffery Zhang <····@cornell.edu> writes:
> I'm also running a Mac Mini core dual, just got it over the
> weekend. It works out of the box. I had it plugged in and was running
> SBCL + Aquamacs + Slime in an hour. It was literally plug and play
> (just download the latest 0.9.11 SBCL OS X Intel distro).
>
> It took me a week to figure out how to install emacs, slime, clisp,
> and asdf tools on my windows machine, it took less than an hour on the
> new Intel mac. And ASDF works out of the box, it's beautiful. I just
> type (require 'asdf) and (require 'asdf-install) and everything is
> set, nothing to download or setup.
>
> It's so strange that in a week of working in windows I feel like I've
> only done a day's work, and in a weekend on a mac I feel like I got a
> week's work out of it. I feel like I've had this mac for a long time
> and yet my package says it was delivered just last Friday. Anyone else
> have this feeling?
To be fair, this probably has more to do with your Mac being
UNIX-based than with any inherent goodness of Macs.
> -Jeff
>
> On 2006-04-24 00:24:18 -0400, "Jason" <·······@gmail.com> said:
>
>> Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
>>> bradb wrote:
>>>> Yup. I like mine a lot. I didn't already have a Mac, but did run
>>>> Linux. There are times where stuff that "just works" on Linux, doesn't
>>>> on Mac. But nothing too arduous so far.
>>>> I use SBCL (thanks to Cyrus Harmon!) and ECL (you'll need the latest
>>>> CVS).
>>> That's exactly my situation. No previous Mac, but running Linux.
>>> What's it like getting slime, emacs, and so on running?
>> I'm not on a MacBook, but I am using a Mac Mini with the Intel Core
>> Duo. Emacs comes with the system out of the box, but it's a console
>> emacs. You can, however, get a Cocoa Emacs from the Apple website. You
>> may need to search a bit. Regardless of the type (console/gui) you use,
>> Emacs seems to be the same on the Mac as on any unix/linux/bsd system
>> that I have used. Sometimes the key bindings are a bit messed up, but
>> that's fixable easily enough.
>> As for Lisp, I installed Fink and got CLISP running very easily,
>> Guile
>> too. All in all I'm very pleased.
>> -Jason
>
>
--
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <o0psj74gqu.fsf@franz.com>
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:
> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> general programming experiences.
After doing the initial work on what has become our newest offering
(see the first "Here's what's new ..." bullet at http://www.franz.com)
I decided to get a Macbook for myself. I love it. And Tiger is da bom...
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> general programming experiences.
I don't have an Intel mac but I did recently move to a PPC one
(obviously not *that* recently) - other than the details of which
binaries they run (which either matter not at all or are crippling if
you need something which doesn't run on the Intel one) I think the
experience is probably the same. I previously used mostly Linux
desktops (well, most recently Solaris 10, but the standard Sun desktop
is now really so close to a Linux GNOME one as makes no odds to other
than fetishists), though also Windows a fair bit when required.
One significant issue to bear in mind is that when I got the mac I did
so with the explicit idea that I wanted something that would Just Work,
and no longer wanted to spend time installing add-ons to make the thing
usable since that's what I do all day anyway. That's mostly worked - I
have a bunch of additional stuff but most of it was painless. But it
explains things like the `there's no pgrep' whinge below - I could get
it, but I won't.
The Mac is the first desktop environment I've used for 10 years which
doesn't make me feel I'm fighting it all the time. It's not perfect
(you *can* get it to do focus-follows-mouse but it's not really right
for instance) but it's good enough which makes a change. Having Unix
underneath it is also a win of course compared to the next-best
contender. They've (generally) got things like software installation
right - most things just appear as a directory which you can put
anywhere, and there's a simple & regular way that defaults / properties
happen. In my opinion it is visually better than Windows - less gaudy,
things work better - and thus far better than any common Unixoid
desktop.
The Unix side of things is slightly annoyingly different if you're used
to a modern SysV-like system - it has a BSD ps, there is no pgrep etc
and so on. But the differences are mild (and *BSD people will be very
happy I'm sure). I have never enabled the root password on my machine
- I do things as root occasionally but only via sudo, and the user I
normally log in as does not have permission to sudo even.
I haven't written any significant CL since I started using it. It
looks like there are perfectly good ports of most of the free &
commercial CLs though. LW has its usual lovely environment.
The most painful thing I've found was emacs, and this is probably
mostly because I've used XEmacs for a very long time. There is a
native XEmacs port (you don't want to run stuff via X if you can avoid
it) but it's a bit marginal, and you have to compile it (which I object
to, see above). I gave up and did this and it's OK, but slow. I
suspect the FSF emacs situation is better, but, well, then you have to
use FSF emacs :-).
I wouldn't go back.
--tim
In article <·······················@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
"Tim Bradshaw" <··········@tfeb.org> wrote:
> The most painful thing I've found was emacs, and this is probably
> mostly because I've used XEmacs for a very long time. There is a
> native XEmacs port (you don't want to run stuff via X if you can avoid
> it) but it's a bit marginal, and you have to compile it (which I object
> to, see above). I gave up and did this and it's OK, but slow. I
> suspect the FSF emacs situation is better, but, well, then you have to
> use FSF emacs :-).
There is Emacs distribution called Aquamacs which a lot of people
seem to use (including me):
http://aquamacs.org/
>
> I wouldn't go back.
>
> --tim
Still waiting for a really small Intel-based laptop from Apple
to appear...
--
http://lispm.dyndns.org/
Rainer Joswig <······@lisp.de> writes:
> In article <·······················@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com>,
> "Tim Bradshaw" <··········@tfeb.org> wrote:
>
>> The most painful thing I've found was emacs, and this is probably
>> mostly because I've used XEmacs for a very long time. There is a
>> native XEmacs port (you don't want to run stuff via X if you can avoid
>> it) but it's a bit marginal, and you have to compile it (which I object
>> to, see above). I gave up and did this and it's OK, but slow. I
>> suspect the FSF emacs situation is better, but, well, then you have to
>> use FSF emacs :-).
>
> There is Emacs distribution called Aquamacs which a lot of people
> seem to use (including me):
>
> http://aquamacs.org/
I used Aquamacs for a while, but switched back to straight GNU Emacs.
I found that Aquamacs had a couple of annoying "enhancements" that
were difficult or impossible to turn off. Flyspell-buffer
automatically running in every buffer including those in lisp mode,
longer startup time, help windows coming up in a new frame and that
frame doing its best to avoid my color settings, etc.
I find that GNU Emacs with Control = Control, Option = Meta, and
Command = Hyper works best for me. But Aquamacs is definitely worth
trying out.
>> I wouldn't go back.
>>
>> --tim
>
> Still waiting for a really small Intel-based laptop from Apple
> to appear...
They announced the 17" MacBook Pro today. Maybe the 12" is next. My
guess is that they're just trying to sell out the PowerBook stock in
each size before announcing the Intel replacement.
On 23 Apr 2006 17:27:53 -0700, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> general programming experiences.
I have one. The only lisp I know of that's available now is Franz
Allegro CL 8.0, which I haven't tried. MCL doesn't run at all, even
under Rosetta. Although I have fink installed, there is not yet an Intel
version of clisp available from fink.
--
Dave Seaman
U.S. Court of Appeals to review three issues
concerning case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
<http://www.mumia2000.org/>
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <o0r73nhutn.fsf@franz.com>
Dave Seaman <·······@no.such.host> writes:
> On 23 Apr 2006 17:27:53 -0700, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
>> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
>> general programming experiences.
>
> I have one. The only lisp I know of that's available now is Franz
> Allegro CL 8.0, which I haven't tried. MCL doesn't run at all, even
> under Rosetta. Although I have fink installed, there is not yet an Intel
> version of clisp available from fink.
I suspect that the problems with Rosetta against most native-compiling
lisps is that there are special emulation/translation needs that Rosetta
wasn't designed to handle. Likely there are problems with signal handling, and
it is also likely that Rosetta doen't recognize some of the PPC instruction
sequences that lisps use but which C, ObjC, C++, etc, don't generate.
My first experience with one of this kind of problem was way back in 1998,
when we were approached by some Mac users who wanted to run our Windows
version on top of SoftWindows - it ran, somewhat, but some of the signal
handling would blow away the lisp and would show a GPF dialog box on the
screen. The reason, it turned out, was that we were using illegal
instructions for generating the signals (we still use these on linux and
freebsd versions) and then we used TRY/EXCEPT handling in the main to
redirect the GPF hardware error to a "signal" handler. But the SoftWindows
emulation took a shortcut, and always assumed that a GPF was unrecoverable,
I didn't look into why our PPC/Mac version doesn't run under Rosetta (I
was busy getting the native Intel version running) but I suspect that it
(and other lisps) are doing some tricks that Rosetta isn't expecting.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
> I suspect that the problems with Rosetta against most native-compiling
> lisps is that there are special emulation/translation needs that Rosetta
> wasn't designed to handle. Likely there are problems with signal handling, and
> it is also likely that Rosetta doen't recognize some of the PPC instruction
> sequences that lisps use but which C, ObjC, C++, etc, don't generate.
I've seen some reports from the MCL/OpenMCL camp that one of the
problems was that Rosetta doesn't provide all of the information in
signals that they needed. Some of the information (most importantly,
the program counter (PC) register) was not at all usable. This affected
not only error handling and debugging, but also the use of signals for
other more mundane applications like EOF handling. Essentially the
signal datastructure just contained garbage for the PC and one or two
other values, thus making it impossible to run those lisps under
Rosetta.
I would also wonder if there were issues with various read or
write-barrier tricks used for GC as well, but I don't have any
information about that. It's just my speculation.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
From: Duane Rettig
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <o0k69eiyjo.fsf@franz.com>
···@sevak.isi.edu (Thomas A. Russ) writes:
> Duane Rettig <·····@franz.com> writes:
>
>> I suspect that the problems with Rosetta against most native-compiling
>> lisps is that there are special emulation/translation needs that Rosetta
>> wasn't designed to handle. Likely there are problems with signal handling, and
>> it is also likely that Rosetta doen't recognize some of the PPC instruction
>> sequences that lisps use but which C, ObjC, C++, etc, don't generate.
>
> I've seen some reports from the MCL/OpenMCL camp that one of the
> problems was that Rosetta doesn't provide all of the information in
> signals that they needed. Some of the information (most importantly,
> the program counter (PC) register) was not at all usable. This affected
> not only error handling and debugging, but also the use of signals for
> other more mundane applications like EOF handling. Essentially the
> signal datastructure just contained garbage for the PC and one or two
> other values, thus making it impossible to run those lisps under
> Rosetta.
As I said before, I didn't actually look at the Rosetta implementation -
our goal was to get native as fast as possible. But yes, if the signal
contexts didn't have the proper pc value in them, then of course all
programs that do any vectoring out from within a signal handler, or
which might examine and decode the currently trapped instructiuon,
would have trouble like this.
> I would also wonder if there were issues with various read or
> write-barrier tricks used for GC as well, but I don't have any
> information about that. It's just my speculation.
Possibly, but signal handling issues are much more likely.
--
Duane Rettig ·····@franz.com Franz Inc. http://www.franz.com/
555 12th St., Suite 1450 http://www.555citycenter.com/
Oakland, Ca. 94607 Phone: (510) 452-2000; Fax: (510) 452-0182
Dave Seaman wrote:
> On 23 Apr 2006 17:27:53 -0700, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> > I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> > general programming experiences.
>
> I have one. The only lisp I know of that's available now is Franz
> Allegro CL 8.0, which I haven't tried. MCL doesn't run at all, even
> under Rosetta. Although I have fink installed, there is not yet an Intel
> version of clisp available from fink.
ECL from CVS works, so does SBCL. Neither support threads yet, SBCL
because it just doesn't (go Cyrus, go!), ECL works but has weirdness.
Brad
Dave Seaman <·······@no.such.host> writes:
> On 23 Apr 2006 17:27:53 -0700, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
> > I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> > general programming experiences.
>
> I have one. The only lisp I know of that's available now is Franz
> Allegro CL 8.0, which I haven't tried. MCL doesn't run at all, even
> under Rosetta. Although I have fink installed, there is not yet an Intel
> version of clisp available from fink.
I've seen reports that Lispworks will have an Intel lisp out in June
2006.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute
On 2006-04-23 22:44:44 -0400, Dave Seaman <·······@no.such.host> said:
> On 23 Apr 2006 17:27:53 -0700, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:
>> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
>> general programming experiences.
>
> I have one. The only lisp I know of that's available now is Franz
> Allegro CL 8.0, which I haven't tried. MCL doesn't run at all, even
> under Rosetta. Although I have fink installed, there is not yet an Intel
> version of clisp available from fink.
I'm running SBCL 0.9.11 on my MacBook Pro. Runs very well under Carbon
Emacs and Slime CVS.
Zac
From: Espen Vestre
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <m1wtdfv3rj.fsf@vestre.net>
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:
> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> general programming experiences.
I've just put my hands on one and I'm not sure if I want one, for a
stupid and simple reason: They've reduced maximum opening angle of
the screen to a mere 123 degrees, as opposed to e.g. 143 degrees on
my PB 12". This makes it ergonomically incompatible with my needs :-(
--
(espen)
From: Frank Goenninger DG1SBG
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2iroyaib2.fsf@pcsde001.local>
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:
> I'm considering getting one, and I'd be interested in lisp and other
> general programming experiences.
MacBook Pro @1.83 GHz w/ 2GB RAM - that beast really runs fast! I am
using ACL8.0 with Emacs (which I downloaded from Apple as a universal
binary app) and SLIME. I am still a newbie but managed to get this to
work without much effort.
My vote: Go for it! And as others have pointed out: There's a high
probability that you'll never want to go back.
Cheers
Frank
Frank Goenninger DG1SBG wrote:
> My vote: Go for it! And as others have pointed out: There's a high
> probability that you'll never want to go back.
I'm expecting that will happen. :-)
Now the question is just size. Small and light or big and fancy?
From: Frank Goenninger DG1SBG
Subject: Re: Anyone here running a new MacBook?
Date:
Message-ID: <m2d5f69jp2.fsf@pcsde001.local>
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:
> Frank Goenninger DG1SBG wrote:
>> My vote: Go for it! And as others have pointed out: There's a high
>> probability that you'll never want to go back.
>
> I'm expecting that will happen. :-)
>
> Now the question is just size. Small and light or big and fancy?
Hmm - This is a matter of requirements and taste, of course. I have
opted to save money on the screen size (and ended up having 15 inch
model) to spend the money for RAM (and now have 2 GB installed).
Rosetta is demanding and the lowest RAM value I'd recommend to go with
is 1 GB.
With the 15 inch model I am still able to work during flights which I
was not able to enjoy with the 17 inch model I had for a few weeks...
So, again: RAM is what you definitely need. All else ...
Cheers
Frank
> Rosetta is demanding and the lowest RAM value I'd recommend to go with
> is 1 GB.
>
I agree, though I went with the base 512 & bought from newegg - almost
$50 cheaper than Apple RAM.
Brad
MacBooks are not the only alternative. I have an iMac at home. It is
very nice, with a big screen (17") and having bought it at Gravis here
in Germany, with 1.5Gb RAM it was about 1400 euros. A very nice price.
I am now testing it with ECL, my own Common-Lisp implementation. Speed
is a little bit disappointing, about 800 secs to run Paul Dietz's test
suite vs. 600 from an AMD64. But this may have many origins: the bignum
library for Intel OS X is not optimized, the Boehm-Weiser garbage
collector is still immature... In any case I am loving this as a
development platform.
Juanjo
"Jonathon McKitrick" <···········@bigfoot.com> writes:
> Frank Goenninger DG1SBG wrote:
> > My vote: Go for it! And as others have pointed out: There's a high
> > probability that you'll never want to go back.
>
> I'm expecting that will happen. :-)
>
> Now the question is just size. Small and light or big and fancy?
Small and light isn't out just yet. (A colleague is waiting for the 13"
model).
BTW, another colleague noticed that for a comparable processor speed
(2.1GHz) and disk size (120GB), the MacBook 17" actually costs LESS than
the 15" model.
--
Thomas A. Russ, USC/Information Sciences Institute