Testing the waters.

[Christopher J. Vogt]

At 9:22 PM -0500 5/8/97, Chris Bitmead uid(x22068) wrote:
>>You and I obviously have different applications/needs for CL.
>>
>>I have ported code I wrote on LispMs to other Lisp environments, and the
>>code was not that difficult to port.
>
>I didn't think the LispMs of old had a POS. This LispPS is not a blind
>copy of the old LispMs.

My recolection is that at Symbolics we had a product, Statice that
supported Persistence (I hate POS as an abreviation because I can't help
but think of the POS we had at Symbolics, and POS stood for Piece Of Shit,
the machine in question was not a LispM).

I personally don't see persistence as the answer to any of *MY* questions.
I don't begrudge somebody persistence if they want it, but can't they have
it and I not?

>
>>I want a LispM because it
>>supports my development, makes me more productive etc.  This is why I harp
>>on functionality and portability.  The end result may or may not run on a
>>LispM, and I don't want to be tethered to one.
>
>That is why I want LispOS to be optionally able to run on top of Unix
>or NT.
>
>>So, I put platform specific
>>code into one file (or multiple files) seperate from the rest of the code.
>>I do the same with UI code, since UI code tends not to be portable.
>
>It doesn't work for POS code though. I've tried it, and it doesn't
>work. If you do try you'll defeat the purpose of POS.

I don't need POS.  I personally don't know anybody who needs it.  It may
solve some problems, but certainly not all.  I think it would be a mistake
to build everything on this.

>
>>>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.
>>
>>I don't understand this at all.  What is the LispOS way?  How does it
>>prohibit my application from *working* on other platforms?  My view of
>>LispOS is essentially a LispM with some updated bells and whistles.  Maybe
>>your view is differnet and that is why we are talking past each other.
>
>LispOS is different in that it will make maximum milage out of having
>a POS as the way of storing everything on the system. (And believe me
>there is incredible milage to be made).

I guess I missed the decision that LispOS was by declaration going to do
all things the POS way.  There haven't even been a thousand messages yet,
how did I miss it :-)

>
>Porting a LispOS program which uses this paradigm to a UNIX machine
>with a UNIXish file model, would be a bit like porting a UNIX program
>to a machine with no operating system at all ... You're better off
>porting Unix to the machine and running your program, rather than
>porting your program to a machine with no OS or file system at all.



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