Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!husc6!purdue!ames!zodiac!jdye
From: jdye@zodiac.ADS.COM (John W. Dye Jr.)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Unix Lisp Environments (why the slow evolution)
Message-ID: <7802@zodiac.UUCP>
Date: 4 May 89 22:32:46 GMT
Sender: news@zodiac.UUCP
Reply-To: jdye@ads.com (John W. Dye Jr.)
Organization: Advanced Decision Systems
Lines: 49

On the subject of Lisp Environments for Unix (SUN) workstations.

As a former Lispm user who presently is a Sun common-lisp hacker
I would like to make a few observations about the state and
evolution of lisp environments for Unix workstations.  Hopefully
these comments will spark constructive discussion about what
we can do to speed the arrival of good lisp based programming environments.

1)  There is not much of a market for Lisp based products (compared to
    C or (UGH) Fortran).  This is the reason that companies cannot afford
    to devote amazing amounts of resources to bring lisp based programming
    environments to market.

2)  The window systems keep changing.  First there was sunview. Then there
    were X and NeWS.  Now there is (soon) a NeWS/X merge (with suntools
    support also).  Developers of lisp programming environments have had
    to program on a moving target (the window systems).  Unfortunately,
    most of the neat stuff that lisp programming environments do are
    window based (window-debuggers, fancy editors). 

3)  Finally, Emacs isnt that bad.  It's programmable, and with the
    right set of hacks and tags tables it begins to approximate the
    typical symbolics compile-test-debug cycle that we are all so
    familiar with.

   
The biggest problem we still face is debugging a multiprocessing lisp
using emacs only (we dont like sunview--OK!).  It would be nice to have
a facility like the lucid editor provides in good old gnu emacs.

What can we do about it???

We could all get together and agree on a window-system platform and
then build the gnu-lisp environment out of it!!

We can wait for Sun,Lucid,Franz, etc to supply us with one
  (see point 1).



Any other Ideas???

JD
jdye@ads.com
"ADS didn't make me write this--STD Disclaimer."

P.S.  I am encouraged by the state of Lisp and its direction.  I forsee
people actually delivering software that runs in lisp in the next 3-5 
years.