🚀 go-pugleaf

Bjorn.Victor@docs.uu.se (Bjorn Victor) writes:
>Is there anybody out there, still?

One wonders, doesn't one?

> ..........
>I still have some problems, though, that I was wondering if anybody
>has solved already.  (How many of you are really using the X11 server?)

Even if you already have the patches that solve the problems with the initial
version, or you waited long enough and finally got Rel-6.1, you probably still
won't want to use it unless you have never used a SPARC station or thelike
before. Maybe our Explorer-II's don't have enough memory (8Meg), but they are
awfully slow as X-servers which defeats the purpose of a sophisticated user
interface. 

>(How many of you are really using Explorers any longer...?)

This is what I wonder too. I've been a Lisp machine buff for a long time but I
think Lisp machines will go extinct soon. Here are some reasons:

- other common lisps are getting better and better (if I want to know whether
  some of the code I write is real portable Common Lisp I try to compile it in
  Allegro or Lucid, not on an Explorer)
- there is no real speed advantage anymore (actually, in our environment
  Explorers are at the low end of the speed scale now - but the comparison
  to other systems like Suns might be unfair because of different memory
  configurations)
- development environments (such as various fancy lisp-modes for GNU emacs)
  are (in my opinion) better then the TI-Explorer environment (there are still
  a few things missing such as window based debuggers and inspectors, but you
  can get approximations of those in the Allegro composer or Sun's SPE)
- last but not least, I want to have a full integration with all the nice
  stuff I can have from the UNIX environment, without having to have a
  re-implementation of each and every thing in Lisp (e.g., news, mail,
  revision control (rcs), x-server, window managers, nice tex/latex modes,
  automatic incremental BACKUPS done by system-managers,....).  

I admit that ZMACS is still nicer than - say - an X-based Emacs such as Epoch
which comes pretty close with highlighing, region marking etc.,
but I'm willing to sacrifice this little extra bit of sophistication for
Epoch's portability, wide availability and integration with Unix and X,
especially,for the large number of users out there that constantly write new
and better packages to make life easier (very important considering the dying 
audience of this news group).

Maybe some of the reasons mentioned above are not quite that compelling if one
considers a Mac+Explorer board (or Sun+Explorer board if it exists)
configuration, but I don't think this is the right way to go.

I'm open to any comments. I changed "religions" and I want to know what
other people think about this issue. People in my department often ask me what
my ideal Lisp development environment would look like. My answer is: I know
what it would look like, it does not yet exist, but it certainly is not a Lisp
machine anymore (be it Explorer or Symbolics).

Hans

hans@cs.buffalo.edu
Hans Chalupsky, Dept. of CS, 226 Bell Hall, SUNY@Buffalo, NY 14260.