Poor Sun timings, as competition...

[JFK@BOLD-EAGLE.varian.dialnet.symbolics.com (Joe F. Karnicky)]

    Date: Tue, 31 Jul 90 10:08:15 -0400
    From: barr@bbn.com (Hunter Barr)

       Date: Mon, 30 Jul 90 16:32 EDT
       From: Barry Margolin <barmar@think.com>
    ...
       The Compile System took about 14 minutes.  Compiling and loading it on a
       Sun 4/280 running Sun Common Lisp 3.0.1 takes about 4 CPU minutes with
       the developmentc compiler and 16 CPU minutes with the production
       compiler (wall times were about 5.5 minutes and 19 minutes).  And on the
       3630 at SLUG it took over 40 minutes.  So, if you're in a heavy
       edit-compile-run cycle the Sun wins.
    ...

    Excuse me, but aren't you still ending up with a comparison of
    Symbolics' obsolete model (3630) with Sun4s?  I think you intended
    this message to compare the Symbolics XL1200 with the Sun4.  

    Also, if you are most interested in "a heavy edit-compile-run cycle",
    then perhaps you could comment on how well the Sun development
    environment supports a programmer spoiled by Genera.  My opinion is
    that the Suns are quite usable, but still have a long way to go to be
    in the same league as Genera.
				______
				HUNTER

I completely agree with Hunter.   Comparing Genera to the lisp
development environments available on SUNS on the basis of speed alone
is as invalid as comparing Lisp to C on the basis of run-time speed
alone.   More important (at least to my work) is the total programming
environment, and I still haven't seen anything that runs on SUNs that
compares to Genera.

Regards,
Joe Karnicky