Again.

[jacopin@laforia.ibp.fr ( Eric JACOPIN)]

>   Date: Mon, 28 Feb 1994 10:19:46 +0100
>   From: "rudolf mittelmann"  <rm@cast.uni-linz.ac.at>
>   Reply-To: "rudolf mittelmann"  <rm@cast.uni-linz.ac.at>

>   Apple (Mr. Fleischmann) complained about the
>   small market share of MCL. Do those people at
>   Apple know that there IS NO MARKETING AT ALL
>   for MCL, at least in Europe? Even the
>   Apple Dealers do not know what this is and how
>   to get it. We discovered it by accident some day.
>   How to expect any market from doing nothing?

I agree with this "non-support @ all", at least for france. The french APDA is
just real shit. 1st they sell regular APDA products as if US$1 = 10 FF (whereas
is US$1 = 6FF) and 2nd they barely answer your questions. + no ad. at all for
the product they're selling.

But I whis to add my words to the "please, Mr. Apple, long live to MCL" current
discussion. So it's over. So what? Let's assume I wish to go on with Lisp. Then
I have to buy a PC with Golden Lisp or a WorkStation with Lucid or the like.
Moving to PCs would mean to trash the hundred of MACs of my lab and then get a
hundred of PC. Moving to WorkStation would mean forget about all the software
available on Micros and not on Suns (at least, surely not for the same price).
So we're just dead. Almost no way to program LISP anymore except with a
readical change in our way of programming and using machines. So that's the
point. Maybe LISP is dead.

If this is true, I just don't see any real good alternative to LISP on MACs.
Browsing the APDA catalog just recall me we should be C (or the like)
programmers.  I remember this AI Magazine issue last year where it was written
that DARPA was giving Symbolics a bunch of US$ millions to unify their LISP
development with C++. However, it is clear that the MCL environment actually is
superior to the C++ one. Maybe this won't be the case in the near future. But
for me, this means trashing a lot of CL programs and hope to find the
equivalent in C++ or the like; no way for the near future.

To me, if Apple abandons MCL, this just means that I must change of language
(if I want to spend the same amount of money to have a development system in
the language I choose); teaching courses must change too; and I must change
too. This might finally be what this discussion is all about: we have to
change.

                                                  [Eric JACOPIN]
LAFORIA-IBP, Boite 169, 4,place Jussieu,
75252 PARIS Cedex 05, FRANCE.                          AI is a bag of tricks.