Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!dewey.soe.berkeley.edu!mkent
From: mkent@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu (Marty Kent)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: ENVOS COMMON LISP (Actually Allegro CL)
Message-ID: <28492@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 22 Mar 89 08:55:02 GMT
References: <7237@siemens.UUCP> <654@arisia.Xerox.COM> <1003@internal.Apple.COM>
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Reply-To: mkent@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Marty Kent)
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In article <1003@internal.Apple.COM> mikel@apple.com (mikel evins) writes:
>missing. I will say, though, that, for a personal computer, or 
>microcomputer, Allegro is a very nice programming environment. Yes, it has 
>gc, it has a nice windowing debugger with a view of the execution stack, 
>and inspectors for all kinds of variables, including system variables not 
>visible in most Mac programming environments; it is very well integrated 
>with the Mac interface toolbox. 
First, I'm speaking from the perspective of a long-time Interlisp
programmer (5 years or so).  I've been programming with Allegro for about
a year.

I sure would like to see something like an end to all this BULLSHIT about
what a wonderful programming environment Allegro provides.  It has a
half-baked set of buggy tools.  So the debugger has -windows-!  It has a
lot less power and flexibility than the debugger from Franz Lisp circa
1981.  The inspector doesn't allow you to set the values of variables,
only to look at them, and it crashes the machine quite regularly with
system divide-by-zero errors.  The stepper bombs if you try to step into a
CASE form. There's no profiler.  There are no lexical analysis tools.
The editor is a text editor, not a structure editor (of course some folks
will argue in favor of this, but I've found structure editors superior for
modifying (if not "typing in") lisp code).

There's a reason I'm more than a little ticked off about all these lacks
in the Allegro environment: about a year ago I spoke with the president of
Coral and gave him a little pitch about developing some of these missing
links and he told me "this is -LISP-  Why should we pay you to develop
these tools when the user community will develop them for free?"

Who was it that used to say "The quality goes in before the name goes on"...


Marty Kent  	Sixth Sense Research and Development
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