Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!qmc-cs!harlqn!chris From: chris@jung.harlqn.uucp (Zany Cornetto) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: It is worth it! [was Re: Common Lisp subsets - are there any?] Message-ID: Date: 29 Jul 89 16:32:55 GMT References: <30255@cornell.UUCP> <398@odi.ODI.COM> <2234@wasatch.utah.edu> <12848@well.UUCP> Sender: news@harlqn.UUCP Organization: Harlequin Ltd, Cambridge, England Lines: 44 In-reply-to: nagle@well.UUCP's message of 24 Jul 89 15:19:00 GMT In article <12848@well.UUCP> nagle@well.UUCP (John Nagle) writes: A Common Lisp system that simply implements "Common Lisp, the Language" isn't all that big. Look at KCL. Common Lisp systems become unwieldy .... Eventually it can all be made to work, but was it worth it? John Nagle Having spent a significant amount of time implementing a highly integrated Common Lisp system the only sane answer I can give is yes. I strongly believe that there IS more to a Common Lisp system than just Common Lisp. This probably goes for C++, ... also. First, a rich, window based, integrated toolset directly increases programmer productivity because the Lisp system is easier to use, due to a good user interface, sophisticated source level debugging tools, powerful editing facilities etc. Secondly, the programming tools are usually built using some kind of toolkit with a well defined interface. This toolkit provides amongst other things a set of user interface widgets that relieve the applications programmer (AP) from the chore of having to implement his own user interface components, such as a text editor, menus, buttons, grapher, etc. Ok, so the resulting Lisp system is larger but for APs developing sophisticated and/or window based applications it seems justifiable. Besides when runtime/delivery images etc are available the size of the development environment becomes less important. Sophisticated garbage collection techniques benefit both application programs and programming environments - no user of a Lisp system on a small workstation likes waiting tens for seconds for a garbage collection to complete while their system thrashes. There is no need to integrate garbage collection with the virtual memory system; very good performance can be obtained on standard platforms running unmodified operating systems. -- chris richardson ---------------- chris@harlqn.co.uk, ..!uunet!mcvax!harlqn.co.uk!chris Harlequin Ltd, Barrington Hall, Barrington, Cambridge, CB2 5RG, England. Phone: 0223 872522 (National), +44-223-872522 (International).