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
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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.