Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!ut-sally!utah-cs!utah-orion!shebs
From: shebs@utah-orion.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Re: A Decent Environment. Where is it? (some flame, some advice)
Message-ID: <177@utah-orion.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 6-Nov-87 18:11:40 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-ori.177
Posted: Fri Nov  6 18:11:40 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 8-Nov-87 22:59:10 EST
References: <21493@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <2630001@hpfcmp.HP.COM>
Reply-To: shebs@orion.utah.edu.UUCP (Stanley T. Shebs)
Organization: PASS Research Group
Lines: 41

In article <2630001@hpfcmp.HP.COM> chan@hpfcmp.HP.COM (Chan Benson) writes:

>It doesn't do you much good since you're running on a Sun, but take a
>look at HP's Common Lisp environment running on our Series 300 Unix
>workstations sometime.  The Emacs based NMODE environment has much of
>the debugging and development tools that are missing in the Lucid
>environment on Sun.
>
>Any unbiased HP Lisp users from the grants program care to comment?

(What is "unbiased" is supposed to mean?)
Utah's comment on NMODE is that we don't use it anymore.  It was great on
the old Chipmunk Pascal workstations, but has gone downhill steadily since
then.  It's slow, flaky, and restrictive.  No sources, so we can't fix
things; doesn't understand termcap/lib, so can't run from anywhere except
the workstation; huge, so you get a choice of thrashing VM or doing long
waits for the GC;  excessive consing, so GCs are not uncommon while you're
typing (how any editor could manage to cons while reading characters is
beyond me); no multiple control threads, so can't edit while a Lisp program
is running; and more.  Kind of a shame, since the hardware is outstanding,
and the original NMODE was really fun to use.  Definitely a case of galloping
featurism getting in the way of little things like editing text.

At present, we use Gnumacs with HP CL as a subprocess.  We lose debugging
goodies, but it's better than getting stopped cold with a minute-long
GC while typing a program in, or losing files because your Lisp code had
a bug in it...

>			-- Chan Benson

While I'm here, I'd like to make a plea for more flexible Lisp programming
environments.  People coming out of Interlisp/Symbolics traditions are very
big on integration, but have no concept of tools.  How hard can it be to 
supply grep and wc and diff?  There is just one way to use the environments
now; program in exactly the way the developers insist on (i.e. get an error,
jump into monster debug menu).  If your style is even slightly different,
it's quite painful to deal with.  Even a few customization options would be
better than nothing...

							stan shebs
							shebs@cs.utah.edu