Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!UB.CC.UMICH.EDU!David_Kieras From: David_Kieras@UB.CC.UMICH.EDU Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox Subject: (none) Message-ID: <1581805@ub.cc.umich.edu> Date: 10 May 88 20:49:56 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 39 In response to Jordan Pollack's message, I'll point out that I too am stuck with a $30K machine that is now worth $3k or less. Fortunately, my other three 1109s were on loan, so I didn't sink any research hard dollars into them, just a heck of a lot personnel time, including my own. I've switched over to Apollos running Lucid Common Lisp. Christopher, I would agree that there are a lot of neat ideas in the Interlisp-D environment, but I disagree that this is quality software. I seen some of the sources (older ones, I'll admit) and have to say it was some of the kludgiest stuff I've seen. The running speed is far slower than the hardware is capable of supporting. But the basic problem seems to be that Xerox never imposed any quality control on the software - far too many bugs, poor version control, bad documentation compared to other commercially supplied systems I've used. And I do a lot of user interface work too! I've concluded that it is a good thing that the Interlisp-D environment has a lot of neat features, because the better ones come close to making up for the lost time and errors resulting from the buggy software, inconsistent methods, poor documentation, and slow running speed of the rest of the system. I hope that the Sun version of this stuff is written using real software engineering methodology, but my bet is that the bugs and clumsiness will be exported along with the good features. I'm enjoying my Apollos; although the LISP environment is crude even compared to my previous favorite of UCI-LISP on a DEC-10, this is a more productive setup because it is easier to get work done with reliable crude software than flakey fancy software. Compared to the Dandelion, the Apollo+Lucid is solid and at least as fast - the darn thing runs, runs fast, and rarely crashes or gets confused due to a vendor's bug! And I can use the machine for something else beside LISP hacking, too. The Dandelion has been like a bad dream. By the way, how about taking me off this mailing list - I've been staying on it just to get repeated confirmations of the wisdom of my choice.