Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!confusion.Princeton.EDU!eho From: eho@confusion.Princeton.EDU (Eric Ho) Newsgroups: comp.sys.xerox Subject: not quite the last word Message-ID: <8805111831.AA01925@confusion.Princeton.EDU> Date: 11 May 88 18:31:41 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 26 ++> I have worked on Exploerers, Symbolics, Suns and MicroVaxs but have found ++> no machine that comes close to the Xerox. Well, superior programming environment is one of the hallmarks of all LISP machines anyway - nothing new. Basically, you've 2 environments to compare with (until other vendors invent better environments or simply incorporate the environments into their products) - the East and West coasts. They all have their various virtues and weaknesses but I wouldn't say that the Xerox's environment is superior to that found in the Symbolics Genera environment - the Xerox is definitely more intuitive I must agree but then there are other things in the Genera environment that one couldn't find in the Xerox environment (or at least not yet). Then of course there are many other things both environments share - afterall the inventors of both environments came from the same grad schools (well, more or less) or at least associated with the same schools. It is interesting to note that many of the user interface stuff (overlapping recursive windows and pop-up menus) first came up in the 60's in MIT's Machine Architecture Lab (now called Media Lab), then of course some of their grad students went to work for PARC afterwards. It'll be interesting to see if the lisp machines vendors come up with better and newer environments though as other manufacturers are starting to incorporate similiar environments (almost identical in most cases) into their products. regards. -eric-