Re: John's flame

[bhyde@gensym.com (Ben A. Hyde)]

john from skdad.usask.ca writes
> > Turning MCL into a multi-applications environment will probably
> > require more thoughts, and a much longer liist of conventions.
>  
> Well,  bluntly,  I don't know if anyone really wanted an 'applications
> environment' when they bought MCL.  And,  clearly,  no Macintosh programmer
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> The fact is,  MCL makes B I G
> CLUMSY and BUGGY applications--a review of this mailing list will give
> you all the evidence you need.
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MCL is not buggy!  I have a lot of code and I have never encountered a
significant bug.  In fact I think MCL is the only application I have
ever used this extensively in which I have never made it eat bits.

That the MCL team provides patches is not a sign of buggy software it
is a sign of excellent customer support.  I have never needed any of those
patches.

MCL is not clumsy.  It is by far the sweetest of the Lisp implementations
I use.  It is a lot smaller then the rest.  Only the real Lisp Machines
have better debuggers.

MCL applications are not big when compared to other Lisp environments,
they are only big compared to simpler programming languages.

> This is ridiculous,  it's quite evident that size has not been a
> priority,  and it never was a priority.
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Priorities are not promises!  When an employee of a vendor states a
priority he is not making a promise.  Priorities should evolve and
push and pull against other priorities.  For example keeping MCL in
synch. with the Common Lisp Standard, and the Macintosh toolbox is
presumably a priority too.  Both of those are more than twice the size
today. 

Even from outside of Apple you can see that they care deeply about
this issue.  The entire Dylan effort is but one example of that.

Finally.  The mother ship idea was not intended to divert attention
away from a discussion of where MCL should go.  It was intended as a
cheap (do it today) solution to the problem that MCL hackers have:
"I can't distribute this little toy I just built."

  - ben hyde