Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ukma!rutgers!gatech!pravda!buff
From: buff@pravda.gatech.edu (Richard Billington)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Unix Vs LISPm Religeous Wars, was Re: Tired C programmer...
Message-ID: <18637@gatech.edu>
Date: 5 May 89 14:45:21 GMT
References: <166@ncis.tis.llnl.gov> <ROBERTS.89Apr29124654@studguppy.lanl.gov> <1133@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov> <384@ists.ists.ca>
Sender: news@gatech.edu
Reply-To: buff@pravda.UUCP (Richard Billington)
Organization: Georgia Institute of Technology
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1) Fixing bad blocks is straight-forward now (lmfs:fix-file or si:fix-fep-file).

2) Annual maintenance on a MacIvory is around $500, the XL400 is similarly low
   but I don't have an exact quote, so I won't say. However, the Ivory technology
   has solved the big hardware maintenance cost problem for the future.

3) The biggest "problem" I'm aware of for Symbolics/Lispms in the ongoing
   "religious" wars is that for every 1000 unix boxes there's only 1 lispm. If
   the reverse were true, I suspect that unix wouldn't even be a recognizable
   word to most folks. It's really pretty primitive; a brilliant use of a couple of
   fairly simple ideas about file systems extended to be an operating system. A lispm
   was originally conceptualized as a program deveopment environment, not as a file
   system. The article that started this off and subsequent comments of "boy I'd miss
   piping, etc" only emphasize to me how broken people's concept of the right way to
   do things can become.

4) I've been a system administrator of both Symbolics Lispm's and unix workstations.
   System admin of unix is a holy terror by comparison (I've done both on and off for
   the last 6 years).

5) Please define "general purpose". A Symbolics runs C, Fortran, Pascal, Lisp, Flavors,
   and Prolog. Symbolics-based graphics systems are state-of-the-art (don't believe me?
   they've won an Emmy and have a massive presence at Siggraph). They now have a
   powerful hypertext system, an object-oriented, distributed, database system, several
   expert system construction tools, state-of-the-art CAD/CAM systems, Macsyma, X-windows,
   TeX and a TeX previewer that actually works (and has for a couple of years), etc. So,
   please, what does this mean: Lisp machines are not general purpose, but unix is?