Re: MCL evaluation & link to HyperCard

[mikel@Apple.COM (Mikel Evins)]

In article <46327@netnews.upenn.edu> kaye@linc.cis.upenn.edu (Jonathan Kaye) writes:
>I had two questions for MCL users, since I know practically nothing
>about MCL:
>
>1. Are applications running in MCL (using CLOS) much slower than
>applications written in other languages (particularly the interface)?

The short answer is no.
It depends on whether you write good Lisp code, and
what the application is doing. MCL's compiler is
good, and people (including me) have written systems
using it that have real-time constraints. On some
combinations of operations, MCL has performed as well 
in tests as C or Pascal. I would venture to say that
if you know how to choose algorithms and data
structures well that speed is not an issue with
MCL. (Size may be a different matter).

>2. Does MCL have a not-too-messy interface to HyperCard (or vice versa)?

No. On the other hand, under System 7.0 you can
use MCL to send AppleEvents to HyperCard. There
also exist pieces of code that enable Lisp and
HyperCard to pass expressions back and forth. It
may be that the owners of some such code can
be persuaded to share it (is it on E.T.O., folks?).