Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucsd!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpcea!hpfcdc!hpfclp!fritz
From: fritz@hpfclp.HP.COM (Gary Fritz)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Ada,Lisp,Flames
Message-ID: <6950006@hpfclp.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Jan 88 17:35:24 GMT
References: <5084@well.UUCP>
Organization: HP SDE, Fort Collins, CO
Lines: 27

> >3.  DEC continues development of it's [sic] own VAX-Lisp; virtually all
> >other hardware vendors have abandoned or are planning on abandoning internal
> >development in favor of OEM'ing from Franz or Lucid.  This includes
> >HP (Rumor).
> 
> Not a rumor; it's true.  The hardware vendors fell into the trap of assuming
> that good software is easy to build - a common misconception of hardware
> types who "once wrote a 200-line Fortran program".  In fact, hardware vendors
> have *rarely* succeeded in producing good software of *any* sort, but it
> doesn't ever seem to stop them from trying...

This is an unfair statement.  HP Common Lisp was developed by a group
of extremely qualified software engineers, many with extensive previous
experience in building Lisps.  Granted, the implementation had some
problems, but those were due more to historical/etc. reasons than to
"hardware types who once wrote a 200 line FORTRAN program".  Just because
someone works for a company that produces hardware, that doesn't make him/her
a software illiterate.  "Hardware" companies hire software types too, ya know.

JJacobs, there are reasons for "abandoning" proprietary CL's other than
a supposedly brain-damaged lanaguge spec.  As an example, there were *no*
acceptable CL's to pick up when HP began developing its own.  However, there
are now some obvious choices of "de facto" standard CL's (such as Lucid),
and it doesn't make sense to expend engineering effort on maintaining a
non-mainstream language.  Lucid has many engineers devoted to the care,
feeding, and improvement of their CL, and it makes sense to join their effort.

Gary Fritz