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From: kentb@tekchips.UUCP (Kent Beck)
Newsgroups: net.micro.mac
Subject: Re: ExperLisp Comments Sought
Message-ID: <503@tekchips.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 11-May-85 14:11:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: tekchips.503
Posted: Sat May 11 14:11:31 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 13-May-85 03:16:29 EDT
References: <863@mhuxt.UUCP>
Reply-To: kentb@tekchips.UUCP (Kent Beck)
Organization: Tektronix, Beaverton OR
Lines: 23
Summary: 

I have a copy of ExperLisp version 1.0 (the released version).  I am
immensely pleased with it.  As Lisps go it is fairly complete, with most of
the utility functions I expect.  It includes hooks for you to create your
own menus, or change the ones that are there.  You can also create and
resize windows.  All the Toolbox graphics calls are there, which to my way
of thinking is the best thing about the package.  The only problem I had was
that I had an animation that was allocating two regions every time through a
tight loop and I eventually crashed the machine.  The problem is that you
can't use the Macintosh data types like you use the Lisp data types.  I
think ExperTelligence did the right thing by not trying to make Mac data
looke like Lisp data.  It's a little bit of a pain, but I'd rather have
things out there where I can see them.  By the way I called ET about my
crash and ended up talking to the president of the company.  He assured me
that version 1.0.2 had fixed the problem and would exit gracefully and
promised to send an update disk right away.  I haven't received it yet, but
it was only 5 days ago.

Bottom line: good Lisp, great graphics, pretty good interface.  Worth $500?
Maybe.

Kent L. Beck
kentb@tektronix
tektronix!tekchips!kentb