Testing the waters.

[Mike McDonald]

>Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 09:48:41 +1000
>From: "Chris Bitmead uid(x22068)" <Chris.Bitmead@alcatel.com.au>
>Subject: Re: Testing the waters.
>To: lispos@math.gatech.edu
>
>>re. CL vs. Scheme
>>
>>There is a lot to be said for standardization, and in part, that is the
>>value of CL over Scheme or any other Lisp.  CL has all these wonderful
>>features built-in, and standardized.
>>
>>I have programs written in CL, and they will port with very minimal
>>problems to other CL implementations.  If I develop on a CL implementation,
>>I can port to others.  In Scheme with this library added, and that
>>non-standard feature added, you don't get portability.  Not only do *I*
>>want portability, but I believe that there are many others that want it as
>>well.
>
>You won't get portability from LispOS to other versions of CL in any
>case, because you won't have the POS ported to the other version of
>CL. And POSes are always very tightly integrated with the virtual
>machine and garbage collector, and application code.

  Who said other versions of lisp won't have a POS? I seem to
remember a certain employee of a certain lisp company saying they were
interested in the idea of a POS. And since a POS hasn't been designed
and built yet, you're only speculating on how hard it might be to
port. Sure, OS support might make things faster/more efficient for a
POS but one might also be able to implement one without all of that OS
support.

  And besides, who says ever LispOS app has to use the POS intimently?
I can imagine a lot of apps being written to use a POS if one's
available, otherwise simulate one using plain old text files. And the
LispOS had better support writing portable apps including those that
store things in persistent arrays of string char or the LispOS will be
a flop before it ever gets built.

>You may get your existing CL lisp programs working on LispOS, but they
>won't do things the LispOS way, so they fall into the general category
>of how to get legacy applications working on LispOS.
>

  We don't have a LispOS. We don't have a POS. But we do have a LispOS
way? Ya, right!

  Mike McDonald
  mikemac@engr.sgi.com