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From: ik@laic.UUCP (Ik Su Yoo)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: re: Allegro Composer vs SUN SPE
Message-ID: <793@laic.UUCP>
Date: 23 Feb 90 20:46:40 GMT
Reply-To: ik@laic.lockheed.com
Distribution: usa
Organization: Lockheed AI Center, Menlo Park
Lines: 32

>  	Is there anyone out there using Allegro Composer or SUN SPE.
>  I need to choose fairly quickly between these or some other 
>  lisp development environment running on a SUN sparkstation.  I'll be
>  happy to post a summary of responses.
>  
>  Thanks,
>  Mark Weissman
>  weissman@bunny.gte.com

I'm not sure what you are asking, but I can summarize my experience with
them -- I have used them both before.

  - Both are almost essential if you use multiple processes. (If you tried
    debugging two "broken" processes using a single lisp listener, you know
    what I mean.)

  - Both gives you window-based debugging and inspecting.

  - Composer gives you profiling, which keeps track of how much time is
    spent inside each function. This statistical summary is nicely presented
    through a tree. I can't recall whether SPE had a similar feature.

  - Composer has simpler and cleaner user interface than SPE.

  - Navigation through backtrace was easier using Composer

  - SPE *seemed* to be more robust and quicker.

I have used Composer far more extensively than SPE, so I may be a bit
biased towards Composer (although I started using SPE before Composer).

Ik