MCL Review

[Walker Sigismund <wws@cix.compulink.co.uk>]

Dear MacWorld,

Hopefully by now you have received enough mail concerning your review 
of MCL 2.0 from Apple to realize that a correction is in order.  MCL
is, and always has been, an extremely usable and affordable
programming environment with excellent editing and debugging
features,  nicely compiled and fast code, full access to the toolbox, 
copious and thoughtful documentation, a CD full of useful and
abundant example files and, last and perhaps best of all from a
serious userUs standpoint, wonderful support from the technical staff 
at Apple.  Having written several megabytes of code using MCL and its 
precursor products over at least five yearsPcovering everything from
data storage and retrieval, a comprehensive statistics package with
complex numerical routines, extensive graphics, and a Macintosh like
point and click interfacePthe reliability and standard of excellence
achieved by the MCL over its entire set of features through every
release of the product is unrivalled by any other Mac product.
Period.

Take a look at programing languages.  In contrast to MCL, the C and
Pascal products from Think come with paltry documentation, few
examples, limited debugging features, a limited object system, and
worst of all, the technical assistance I have attempted to get from
them on a number of occasions spotty or non-existent.  

MCL has also, in my experience, been a better product than main
stream products like Excel and Word by Microsoft.  On the one hand
MCL is definitely as stable and well thought out as these big-budget
mass products, and every bit as useful day-to-day as part of my
working routine.  As a well documented and richly TexampledU
programming environment, MCL is a much better problem solving tool in 
many common situations.  But when it come to support, the MCL team at 
Apple deserve plaudits and the technical staff at houses like
Microsoft discredit..  At least the run-around I got from Microsoft
over a 12 month period concerning code resources and Excel 3.0 for
the Macintosh last year have left me with a distinct distaste for the 
likes of Microsoft when you really need them technically.  Can you
imagine that both the European and American staffs could do no better 
than ...  RYes code resources are mentioned in the documentation and
we are sure they work... but we cannot actually show you an example
of a code resource using strings or floats with Pascal on a
Quadra.... R  

As an active reader of MacWorld over many years, I was quite
disappointed in this slipshod review and hope that you will correct
the false and incomplete impression which it left your readers.  When 
compared to real world programming products and alternatives your
readers deserve to know that MCL is a great product.  As a complete
and faithful implementation of Lisp, it also has many advantages over 
other programming languages.  It is easy to use and a pleasure to
develop small programs or large systems in for the programmer can
focus on solving the problem at hand rather than wasting time
declaring types and making other compiler directives unless and until 
the program is fully working and its time to tweak it for speed.  In
terms of quality and price a real standout.  Apple has provided a
real amateur programmers like me with a great product and support and 
its worth every penny and minute IUve spent on the product.  As a
user of many Macintosh products, I am sure that MCL deserves your
highest rating if any product ever has. 

Walker Sigismund, London