Re: Slightly Disappointing Review of MCL 2.0 in October MacWorld

[Didier.Guillon@imag.fr (Didier Guillon)]

Hi all,

I haven't read the article in Mac World, but I had a good feedback reading
Rainer Joswig.

Some points :

        Common Lisp
I have been working with TI on Explorer machine, and to my point of view,
the MCL implementation is a very good job of Common Lisp implementation.

        CLOS
Yet no fully CLOS in all the definitions, what Apple furnished allow us to
implement the needed abstraction for our program.

        Testing of code
I am extensivly using MCL for 4 years+ (with Coral) and tools are
sufficients to point out directly problems. It seems to me that the
language in itself cannot be compare in the way you implement C or Pascal
languages. Obviously tools for testing code could be added, but for ease of
use I would say.

        Interface
This point is very difficult to point out objectivly. I had use extensively
Action! from ExperTelligence with pleasure and ease of creation which I
never see on any other language and any other machine. The dark side is
it's size..
On the other end at the present time I am using Interface Builder of MCL,
and I must admit a lack of integration in the code. If you want to get a
well written code, you have to rewritte the interface, but starting from a
basis at least !

Personnaly I use MCL in a development where no one would have used it : in
extensive numerical use. This point leads us to implement oject algorithms
of Euler, Runge Kutta, Crank-Nicholson. Our conclusion on the testing with
C shows us a 60% difference in speed and much less for Pascal. We were
surprised and pleased. The difference on such simulations looks for us very
thin.
The other parts: object structuring, interface implementation were so easy
with MCL and CLOS that I doubt someone could do better in any other
languages.(as we start inmplementing in C++ for portability I could tell
presicely within some months).

I want to finish my message in adressing to the lisp community and to the
Apple team a real thank for what everyone does for the newsgroup. People in
Cambridge "are a good reason for bying MCL" also.   Keep up the good work.

Regards

PS : I apologize if my English is not so good.


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| Didier Guillon | (33) 76.63.71.00 poste 8309 | Didier.Guillon@imag.fr |
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|  Universite Joseph Fourier                                            |
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