Testing the waters.

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 8:30 PM -0500 5/8/97, Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
>
>CB>  You may get your existing CL lisp programs working on LispOS, but
>CB> they won't do things the LispOS way, so they fall into the general
>CB> category of how to get legacy applications working on LispOS.
>
>CV> I don't understand this at all.  What is the LispOS way?  How does
>CV> it prohibit my application from *working* on other platforms?  My
>CV> view of LispOS is essentially a LispM with some updated bells and
>CV> whistles.  Maybe your view is differnet and that is why we are
>CV> talking past each other.
>
>If there is not a better and easier LispOS way, then what is the point
>of using LispOS?  Sure, if someone wants to go out of their way to use
>antiquated and gratuitous features for the sake of portability, they
>can do that.

I'm not sure I follow, but let me repeat a statement I have made in other
threads.

I have used a LispM and it is still the best *DEVELOPMENT* environment I
have ever used.  The reasons for this are many, to name but a few: Lisp to
metal, single address space, all the features available in the standard CL
(macros and CLOS to name but a few) (the LispMs originally were not coded
in CL because it didn't exist, but much of CL was *HEAVILY* influenced by
what was being done at Symbolics, to the point that converting from
Symbolics Lisp to CL was trivial (a program was written that did 99% of the
conversion for you - the power of Lisp)).  As you can tell from my
parenthetical paragraph, I have been writing Lisp for too long.

*I'd* be happy if LispOS was identical to a LispM.  Was a LispM perfect?
No, far from it, but the development environment was and is superior to
anything else available.  I still long for it.  But development is only
part of *MY* problem.  I need to deliver applications, and if a customer
wants it to run on Windows NT, I have to deliver, or I don't make money.
Sometimes a customer is so happy with the product, they don't care what it
runs on, but this is more the exception than the rule.

Christopher (Chris) J. Vogt
mailto:vogt@novia.net
Omaha, NE
http://www.novia.net/~vogt/