Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!atanasoff.rutgers.edu!lou From: lou@atanasoff.rutgers.edu (Lou Steinberg) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Looking for Common Lisp on Sun Message-ID: Date: 27 Dec 89 15:51:31 GMT References: <19283@uhnix1.uh.edu> Distribution: na Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 31 To: manli@cs.uh.edu In article <19283@uhnix1.uh.edu> manli@cs.uh.edu (Man L. Li) writes: > We are looking for Common Lisp interpreter and compiler for our Sun-3 and > Sparc-stations. [...] > Occasionally I heard of Allegro Common Lisp and Ibuko (?) Common Lisp. > How good are they? Since this is for class work as well as research work, > the package has to be reliable. We (the Rutgers University CS Department) use Allegro Common Lisp for all our class work in lisp and much (most?) of our research work in lisp. All of this is on suns - 3's and 4's. There have been occasional bugs (e.g. closures did not work right in compiled code with one of the earlier releases on the sun-4) but no more than one would expect in this size of a system. Franz Inc., who provide Allegro Common Lisp, have been very good about support. We also have a couple of copies of Lucid, mostly to support KEE. I am not very familiar with Lucid, but my general impression is that Lucid and Allegro are pretty much in the same ballpark as far as features and quality. Which is better for a given situation depends on the details of what you are doing. Price was probably the major factor that caused us to go with Allegro (although the prices have no doubt changed a few times since we made our purchase), and I have not been unhappy. I know nothing about Ibuki. -- Lou Steinberg uucp: {pretty much any major site}!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!lou arpa: lou@cs.rutgers.edu