Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!ukc!icdoc!syma!aarons
From: aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Unix Lisp Environments (why the slow evolution)
Summary: Pop-11 tends to be smaller
Keywords: size of lisp systems
Message-ID: <1029@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 27 May 89 07:56:12 GMT
References: <31670@sri-unix.SRI.COM> <469@skye.ed.ac.uk> <8585@ihlpf.ATT.COM>
Organization: School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, Sussex Univ. UK
Lines: 47

jdu@ihlpf.ATT.COM (John Unruh, NY9R) writes:

>
> In article <469@skye.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) writes:
    ........
> > ......There is often also a strong negative reaction
> >to Lisp systems that are many megabytes in size ....
> >
    .......
>
> Many machines have limits on the maximum process size, and have problems
> with really big processes.  This may be an artifact of how conventional
> programming languages work.  Most C programs are fairly small, and the
> environment is not integrated in the same way as a Lisp machine, so the
> whole thing tends to be less memory intensive.

Following on from my previous message on the syntactic differences
between Lisp and Pop-11, I guess I should point out that a full
Pop-11 development environment on a workstation tends to be very
much smaller than some of the well known Lisp environments.

This is partly because of the heavy use of auto-loading, which means
that Pop-11 facilities you don't use don't get linked into your
process. You can get useful work done in Poplog Pop-11 even on a 2
Mbyte machine (and that includes running a Pop-11 process that
includes an integrated Emacs-like, but smaller, editor VED), whereas
Lisp development environments tend to require far more memory.
Poplog Common Lisp doesn't require nearly so much (you can get
useful work done in 2.5 to 3 Mbytes) but it is not as heavily
optimised as Lucid. (It compensates by compiling faster.)

Like other AI language vendors we are adding tools to Poplog to allow
you to link an image containing only what your final system needs.
However, the minimal size will still be considerably more than
the minimal size of a C program.

Aaron Sloman,
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences,
Univ of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QN, England
    INTERNET: aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
              aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%nsfnet-relay.ac.uk@relay.cs.net
    JANET     aarons@cogs.sussex.ac.uk
    BITNET:   aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs@uk.ac
        or    aarons%uk.ac.sussex.cogs%ukacrl.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu

    UUCP:     ...mcvax!ukc!cogs!aarons
            or aarons@cogs.uucp