Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.clos
Subject: Re: CLOS' popularity
Message-ID: <4923@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 7 Jun 91 13:55:31 GMT
References: <9105131105.AA13630@hcsrnd> <9105181833.AA05092@rice-chex> <1991May28.033548.26907@cs.cmu.edu> <4846@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991May30.082921@disuns2.epfl.ch> <4900@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1991Jun6.091402@disuns2.epfl.ch> <1991Jun6.092905@disuns2.epfl.ch>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 50

In article <1991Jun6.092905@disuns2.epfl.ch> baechler@disuns2.epfl.ch (Emmanuel Baechler) writes:
>> In the paragraph following the one you quote above, I wrote
>> 
>>    I still don't have a machine that's big enough to run the big
>>    Common Lisp implementations together with their programming
>>    environments ...
>> 
>> The machine on my desk is a SPARCstation.

>  In my lab, we have lisp machines (Symbolics) and SparcStations. My desk
>machine is a Symbolics. However, I use suns from time to time, and I read
>my mail (and News) on a sun. Their environnment is more primitive than what
>you can find on a lispm, but they are fast and I never encountered a
>memory problem, neither did any of my colleages who use them for develop-
>ment. All our machines are between 16 and 24 megs, and they work well.

I don't see why we have to disagree.  I am perfectly willing to
believe that one of the large commercial Common Lisps will run well
on a SPARC that has enough memory.  Indeed, that has been my
experience too.  What you could do in return is recognize that
some people don't have enough memory and aren't likely to get
enough more in the near future.  16 Meg is ok sometimes, but
certainly not always.  Using Common Lisp + CLOS + CLX + CLUE,
for example, more than 16 meg seemed to be needed; and that was
before trying anything like a large application.

The plain fact is that a number of people form their opinion of
Common Lisp by trying one of the big commercial CLs on machines
that aren't up to the job -- even though they are reasonably
powerful machines that work fine for a wide range of applications
written in C.  It would be nice if I could point them to a Common
Lisp that would work on their machine.  But I can't.  And, unlike
you, I can't even say "it works for me", because it doesn't.

>>  All the Common Lisp implementations I know are now sold with CLIM
>> 
>> Is CLIM available only commercially?  Or is there some public domain
> 
>I don't know any public domain version, But I don't believe that this will
>really harm people: Franz Inc (I guess that it's the same for lucid), has
>really interesting academic prices, so I doubt that this is a problem, even
>for people in the universities.

Well, it won't harm _some_ people.  I think it helps a lot that PCL
and CLX are free.  If to use CLIM one has to buy Franz Inc CL, that
will be a problem for some people at least in this University.  It
also does nothing for those who want to use some other CL such as
KCL or CMU CL.

-- jd