Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!uw-beaver!mit-eddie!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!hpfcso!hpfcdj!jayavant From: jayavant@hpfcdj.HP.COM (Rajeev Jayavant) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Re: Looking for KCL on MIPS & AKCL. Message-ID: <20220001@hpfcdj.HP.COM> Date: 1 Nov 90 16:36:07 GMT References: <1990Oct26.123828.7308@cs.nott.ac.uk> Organization: Hewlett Packard -- Fort Collins, CO Lines: 68 / hpfcdj:comp.lang.lisp / espen@math.uio.no (Espen J. Vestre) / 8:54 am Oct 31, 1990 / >> Just curious: >> Are there any people using AKCL for serious purposes? I just find it >> funny that people are asking for AKCL on all these fancy machines - the >> cost of one of the fine commercial lisps is probably usually minor >> compared to the hardware costs involved. The group I worked with at MIT uses KCL as the base for its software environment. We initially started out using Franz/Allegro and switched to KCL for several reasons. The main one was startup time of dumped executables - KCL is several times faster. The other is that we were able to build KCL dumped executables in a way that allowed a great deal of code to be shared among several processes, reducing demands on the VM system and reducing swap space requirements. Although it wasn't a significant factor in our decision to switch to KCL, you have to remember that there are long-term costs for using "one of the fine commercial lisps". You do want software upgrades, don't you (especially if you're doing something serious)? KCL is pd, updates are available over the net, and since it comes with source, we could fix problems if we ran into them. I added a number of features to KCL that tailored it for our use, making it more desirable than most of the commercially available products. >> It's not that I don't like pd programs, it's just that I tried a small >> program I have that does some runtime compiling when loading, and I found >> out that the the AKCL compiler is several times slower on a decstation >> 3100 than the MACL compiler on the tiny-and-usually-regarded-a-toy >> Macintosh SE!! (hw+sw costs about $2000...) >> It must be a pain to develop software with it. >> (I must admit that the code produced seems reasonably fast, however) The fact that KCL is pd was another major reason for switching to it from a commercial product. In a university research environment, it is much easier to share your work with others if you don't have to convince them to buy a license for some commercial product that they do not already have. I agree that the KCL compiler is slow, probably because of the intermediate compile to C, but the bottom line is how fast the resulting code runs. I am willing to spend a little more development time to have a faster product. Besides, who says you need to compile your functions all the time while you're developing code. Use interpreted code until it seems reasonably stable and then compile it. Or automate things to do you're compiling at night... As to the MAC, you have to ask whether you really have comperable capabilities in the Lisp environment before you can make comparisons like that. It may be good enough for you example, but what about "serious" work? I like(d) developing in the KCL environment, especially after I hacked in an interface to talk to a running KCL listener from a GNU emacs buffer (like the emacs support in Allegro). Rajeev >> ----------------------------------------- >> Espen J. Vestre >> Department of Mathematics >> University of Oslo >> P.o. Box 1053 Blindern >> N-0316 OSLO 3 >> NORWAY espen@math.uio.no >> ----------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rajeev Jayavant (rajeev@hpfcla.hp.com) "Excuse me, I've lost my marbles" Hewlett Packard - Graphics Technology Division - P. Opus, [Bloom County]