Hi,
I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding pro
and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be speed in
floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
Any ideas?
Hans
On 19 oct, 11:56, hk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
> thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding pro
> and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be speed in
> floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Hans
I was trying this two commercial Lisp, my choice is Allegro CL.
Why ? it's a personal opinion of course :
- quality of environment
- simplicity to create quickly GUI
- Speed, reliability, quality of compiler
- library : number, useful and efficient
- quality of support
But I regrets : GUI non portable between Windows, Linux/Unix, MacOS,
but I think this point is in improvement way.
And Allegro have AllegroCache, Allegrograph and because I love it,
AllegroServe.
Ok, I agree that lispworks is nice too and more affordable.
Best Regards,
Christophe
On Oct 19, 5:56 am, hk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
> thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding pro
> and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be speed in
> floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Hans
If you're interested in using either to make money, I'd strongly
recommend you become very familiar with their licensing requirements
and cost structure (including development licenses, deployment
licenses, annual maintenance fees, etc.). It will do you little good
to fall in love with a particular IDE only to discover later that the
long term costs and/or licensing requirements are prohibitive.
On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:56:53 +0200, hk wrote:
> I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
> thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding
> pro and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be
> speed in floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
>
> Any ideas?
They both offer free trial versions, so you can check yourself and
look at the features that are important to you.
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
On 2007-10-19 12:10:14 +0200, Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> said:
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 11:56:53 +0200, hk wrote:
>
>> I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
>> thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding
>> pro and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be
>> speed in floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> They both offer free trial versions, so you can check yourself and
> look at the features that are important to you.
>
> Edi.
I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions. I thought
experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
Hans
On Oct 19, 11:16 am, Hans Kestler wrote:
> I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions. I thought
> experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
> Hans
Not limitations which should have affected any of the specific
questions you asked. If there were other problems which were breaking
your application (heap size limits etc) then I'm sure either company
would offer you a time-limited trial license.
That being said, you should obviously be using Functional Frog#, not
Lisp.
On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:16:21 +0200, Hans Kestler wrote:
> I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions.
And these limitations prevented you from finding out whether it is
easy to make GUIs and whether the floating point performance is
adequate for your needs?
> I thought experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
From my experience (sic!), this won't help you at all. Much of what
makes you comfortable with a development environment (and that's the
most important point) stems from personal preferences. I could tell
you that I prefer LispWorks and that might give you a warm and fuzzy
feeling, but then Kenny will come along and tell you that AllegroCL's
IDE is the greatest thing since sliced bread. What's next? You're
waiting for more votes to come in and opt for the majority decision?
Hmmm...
The only recommendation I can give you (and, yes, this is based on a
couple of years of experience using Lisp for commercial work) is that
you should try to develop a medium-sized application in both of the
environments you're interested in. Spend at least two man weeks in
one IDE, try to learn as much about it as you can and try to actually
/use/ what the IDE has to offer. And even that is not a fair
comparison, as you'll probably end up preferring the one you started
with. Well...
Also, ask yourself what you want to do with the IDE once you've bought
it and check if the license deals the vendors have to offer fit with
that.
HTH,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Edi Weitz wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:16:21 +0200, Hans Kestler wrote:
>
>
>>I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions.
>
>
> And these limitations prevented you from finding out whether it is
> easy to make GUIs and whether the floating point performance is
> adequate for your needs?
Word.
>
>
>>I thought experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
>
>
> From my experience (sic!), this won't help you at all. Much of what
> makes you comfortable with a development environment (and that's the
> most important point) stems from personal preferences. I could tell
> you that I prefer LispWorks and that might give you a warm and fuzzy
> feeling, but then Kenny will come along and tell you that AllegroCL's
> IDE is the greatest thing since sliced bread. What's next?
Kenny suddenly remembers the OP asked about Macs and that the AllegroCL
IDE does not run there so you have to use Emacs+Slime, which gets him
off on a yobbo/FSF rant and an ensuing pissing contest that runs on for
days?
kenny
--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
"Career highlights? I had two. I got an intentional walk
from Sandy Koufax and I got out of a rundown against the Mets."."
- Bob Uecker
On Oct 19, 1:43 pm, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> days?
This is Lisp. What would take days in any other language group we
spend years over. Of course, if you used Functional Frog# you
wouldn't have this problem because the system would prove at compile
time (if not before) that you need a nice Microsoft IDE and none of
this hippy free crap.
On 2007-10-19 12:37:26 +0200, Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> said:
> On Fri, 19 Oct 2007 12:16:21 +0200, Hans Kestler wrote:
>
>> I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions.
>
> And these limitations prevented you from finding out whether it is
> easy to make GUIs and whether the floating point performance is
> adequate for your needs?
>
>> I thought experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
>
> From my experience (sic!), this won't help you at all. Much of what
> makes you comfortable with a development environment (and that's the
> most important point) stems from personal preferences. I could tell
> you that I prefer LispWorks and that might give you a warm and fuzzy
> feeling, but then Kenny will come along and tell you that AllegroCL's
> IDE is the greatest thing since sliced bread. What's next? You're
> waiting for more votes to come in and opt for the majority decision?
> Hmmm...
>
> The only recommendation I can give you (and, yes, this is based on a
> couple of years of experience using Lisp for commercial work) is that
> you should try to develop a medium-sized application in both of the
> environments you're interested in. Spend at least two man weeks in
> one IDE, try to learn as much about it as you can and try to actually
> /use/ what the IDE has to offer. And even that is not a fair
> comparison, as you'll probably end up preferring the one you started
> with. Well...
>
> Also, ask yourself what you want to do with the IDE once you've bought
> it and check if the license deals the vendors have to offer fit with
> that.
>
> HTH,
> Edi.
Thank you, indeed that does help. You really gave me new insights.
Hans
Hans Kestler wrote:
>> They both offer free trial versions, so you can check yourself and
>> look at the features that are important to you.
> I did that. Both have limitations in their trial versions. I thought
> experienced Lispers like you could help me there.
It's no secret that I am affiliated with one of the commercial vendors,
but I'll try to be neutral here.
The "trial" versions from the several vendors do have limitations, but
for nearly all evaluation purposes I wouldn't think these limitations
would prevent a reasonable evaluation. If your particular purposes are
indeed hindered by the limitations, then I believe all vendors are
willing, even eager, to provide a time-limited license of the full
versions of their products for commercial evaluation. Contact them.
By the way, it took me years of squalling at management to change the
free product name of my employer's offering from "trial". The notion of
"trial" implies a limited trial period, but what the Lisp industry
needed is a time-unlimited free version so that beginners and
enthusiasts could invest significant learning time with a large, new,
and complex language idiom. Adopters need to know that they won't lose
their new toy when a "trial" period expires. Java didn't gain the
modest success it has achieved with Sun limiting free evaluation periods
to 30 days ...
In article <········@news.uni-ulm.de>, hk wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am thinking of buying a commercial lisp (use: intel Mac). I am
> thinking of Lispworks or Allegro, but I have difficulties finding pro
> and cons (apart form the cost). The important points would be speed in
> floating point calulations and easy of making GUIs.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Hans
Allegro CL does not yet have a native IDE on the Mac.
It also comes with no vendor-supported GUI-Toolkit for the Mac.
Other than that it is a good choice.
Allegro CL comes with a lot of source, which I think
is a huge plus. You might ask Franz about the possibility
of royalty free app delivery. Franz also does
not offer a 64bit version for Intel Macs.
LispWorks has a native IDE on the Mac and CAPI
is based on Cocoa on the Mac. Though I'd say it
is not that Mac-like and CAPI is originally
coming from Motif and Windows, which shows a bit.
But having a native IDE (it is also quite usable),
is a big plus.
LispWorks only comes with source for examples
and a bit of the editor. Not that good, if you ask me.
The ability to generate royalty-free apps is
a huge plus. LispWorks is also not that cheap.
You have to include the cost of maintenance and/or
updates. You have to buy the 64bit version for
added costs. Quite expensive, especially now that
all Macs are 64bit and Mac OS X supports 64bit
also with their libraries (Cocoa).
Make sure also that you get a free update in case
there is one needed for Mac OS X 10.5, which will
be available next week. I don't now if the Lisps
will run under 10.5 without patches or even
a new version. For LispWorks it would
also be possible that they offer a Cocoa-GUI-version
for 64bit machines, which is not available under 10.4,
since 10.4 does only have 32bit Cocoa support.
10.5 will have 64bit Cocoa support.