Ditto for me, except I can't type a zillion WPM so I
have to keep it short. Still MANY times faster typing
than clicking, though. If the emacs lisp iface goes
away or takes second-place status, I'm gone too.


> From <naggum.no at erik> Mon Jun  9 09:08:23 1997
> Date: 09 Jun 1997 13:59:09 UT
> From: Erik Naggum <naggum.no at erik>
> To: Jim Veitch <Franz.COM at jim>
> Cc: <alcoa.com at john.watton> (John D. Watton), 
.3.2 for
> Subject: Re: Franz ACL 4.3.2 for Windows compared to ACL 3.0.1
> 
> Jim,
> 
> I'm cautiously excited about ACL 5.0, a definite case of mixed feelings.
> on the positive side: I was seriously disappointed with ACL for Windows --
> it was no better than a randomly chosen Windows application (i.e., it
> crashed very often), and it was a lame implementation of Common Lisp.  so
> I'm correspondingly positively excited that you're now offering an Allegro
> Common Lisp for NT that deserves your trade name.  however, I'm not at all
> thrilled with User Interfaces according to Bill Gates.  I found it much
> harder to learn to use NT _efficiently_ than to learn to use GNU Emacs
> efficiently.  (learning to use NT inefficiently is of course effortless --
> it's main selling point.)  after about a month of working on an NT machine
> with that 3.0.2 thingy under WinEmacs, I was still five times more
> productive with ACL 4.3 under Emacs on my own machine.
> 
> | 2. We are working hard to get the PC GUI (Common Graphics and the
> | Interface Builder) ported and to run well on it.  This is a very major
> | task and will take us a while yet.  CLIM runs on it, but our major effort
> | is going to port the PC GUI.
> 
> the main advantage of programming in Common Lisp for me is that I work so
> much faster in the Emacs/ACL environment (with the HyperSpec) than in any
> other programming environment I have tried.  (compared to CMUCL, I get
> about 25% more work done.)  if Allegro Common Lisp should become one of
> those grossly unproductive tools that Bill Gates has hoisted on the world,
> I have to drop Allegro and go for something less intrusive, such as
> returning to CMUCL, which is coming out in its 18th release.  if I have to
> drop Allegro because of the cost of its inefficient new user interface,
> it's hard for me make long-term plans that involve continued development
> with Allegro CL.  in plain language: I need some serious reassurances that
> I am not forced to suffer the kind of user interface paradigms into which
> Microsoft has ensnared the whole world.
> 
> now, I type between 80 and 100 words per minute and I think almost
> exclusively verbally, to the point where I don't even remember what images
> and icons mean.  the movement of the mouse and clicks down a menu take so
> much time and detract so much from my concentration that I lose 20 to 25
> words of effective typing before I regain speed.  filling in forms under
> Windows easily takes ten times longer than writing into the listener.  I
> don't remember pathways through menus, either, so I frequently have to scan
> through menus to find them.  however, I _do_ remember literally thousands
> of keybindings in Emacs, and my active vocabulary is reportedly well above
> 200 000 words (Norwegian, English, Latin), yet menu navigation incurs
> "cognitive load" while typing and reading don't.  for me, a menu-based user
> interface is suitable only when (1) I don't know what I'm doing, and (2) I
> don't intend to learn what I'm doing very well, either.  this is how I deal
> with automated telling machines in the transit halls of relay airports in
> countries where I have no intention of staying.  I don't want to be reduced
> to this kind of illiteracy when writing complex software.  I want my brain
> to be free to think about the solution to the problems I'm trying to solve,
> _not_ to worry about menus, mouse clicks, window management nonsense, etc,
> etc.  IMSNHO, the User Interface According to Bill Gates is the world's
> most intrusive user interface, bar none.  I'm deeply sorry to see how it
> wastes the time of perfectly good employees and the money of employers.
> 
> | 3. We are working hard to add some Windows specific components such as
> | OLE capability.
> 
> this is very welcome, of course.
> 
> | 4. We are redoing the GUI somewhat to be more like, for example, the
> | Visual Basic interface (note we aren't giving up on the advantages of
> | Lisp, though!).  That way we believe we will be able to attract new users
> | into the Lisp world more easily.
> 
> all fine and dandy for those new users, but please do not to make this the
> only way to work with ACL 5.0, or you will scare off _many_ old users.  I
> don't want to work with Bill Gates' idea of an operating system or of user
> interaction if I can at all help it.  (although it applies more to an
> international airline, NT is "Such A Bad Experience, Never Again").  I
> started programming (for real) on a DECSYSTEM-10 in 1982.  incredulously, I
> find that I was able to complete a programming task on a keypunch and a 300
> baud terminal much faster than today's expert programmers get the same task
> done under Windows with Microsoft Developer Studio and Visual C++.  (I
> know, 'cuz I spent two weeks writing a table-driven, adaptive data entry
> program in MACRO-10 assembly in 1982.  I rewrote it in C for Unix in 1989,
> which took me another couple weeks, but last year, a programmer at a
> company that sells programming services for Windows at an insanely high
> hourly rate, spent _five_ weeks reimplementing it for Windows 95, and he
> says he'll need two more weeks to port it to Windows NT.  now, the real
> downer is that users spend nine times more time entering data into the
> user-friendly Windows application than they did with either of my versions,
> partly because this grossly overpaid Windows programmer never got the
> adaptive part to work right.)
> 
> now, I'm not unique in not wanting to suffer Windows.  several programmers
> I know have dropped to at most half, usually less than one third, their
> Unix productivity even after learning Windows well.  Windows is the only
> environment I know where my brain is more occupied with how to do the job
> than doing the job: the constant manual labor involved in moving the mouse,
> forcing the precise positioning that only a mouse requires, and the total
> lack of programmability at the level it is _needed_ drives me up the wall.
> 
> it could be that there is some sort of "generation gap" involved here where
> "my generation" both think and work differently from the "new generation"
> and that the Lisp community can't attract people to the efficient ways
> without giving the new generation their familiar and inefficient ways first
> and let them learn of the possible improvements.  (I'll note in passing
> that the Lisp Machines had a graphical user interface from the start, and
> their users were reportedly very efficient on them, but it took a lot of
> training to get there.  today's user interfaces are only good at letting
> employers pick employees randomly off the street and making them useful
> without training (because they don't get appreciably better with training).
> I don't think it makes sense to flirt with serious programmers on these
> premises.  I don't think programmers will choose Lisp for the anything near
> the reason they choose Visual Basic or Visual C++, either.  I think Lisp is
> chosen by programmers who have made an informed decision about their tools,
> not programmers who take whatever is hyped in some trade rag or handed to
> them by some ignorant manager who is more concerned with the cost of
> replacing his employees than with the quality of their work.)
> 
> | ACL 4.3.2 + the PC GUI (redone as in 4.) is the basis for our next major
> | release (ACL 5.0) and will replace both ACL Win 3.0 and ACL 4.3.
> 
> I'd like to buy the "PC GUI" seperately, just as I may buy Allegro Composer
> separately for the Unix version.  it is of _vital_ importance to me that
> the "PC GUI" remains an unexercised option and that I can continue to use
> ACL 5.0 under Emacs, without menus, as I use it now.  (there is still a
> strong need to make the Emacs Lisp interface better.)
> 
> however, there are clearly tasks for which a graphic user interface would
> be beneficial.  the inspector is my favorite example.  the profiler could
> also do with a zooming function.  I'm convinced that graphic user
> interfaces are only useful when the user is not in any way providing input
> into a program, only selecting from some of its output, or doing very
> simple tasks, like operating a fax machine or an ATM or a CD-ROM player.
> 
> | On the other hand, if you have a use for a high performance Windows NT
> | Lisp with Multi-threading and with CLIM only GUI (or a direct interface
> | into the WinAPI), then ACL 4.3.2 for NT is just right for you and we will
> | talk about making available to you (contact <franz.com). at sales>  Examples
> | include people who might want to build a Webserver or who have an
> | existing UNIX/CLIM implementation.  But we haven't been actively
> | promoting because we have been pushing so hard towards the next major
> | release (ACL 5.0).
> 
> _this_ is the good news, Jim.  I just turned down a client because he said
> I had to use NT and my sales rep with you had told me the NT version was
> too far into the future for me to base any short-term decisions on it.  my
> past experience with Allegro for Windows was so bad that I'm not going to
> use it again.  of course, when I had found how I could use the Unix version
> efficiently, and the Windows version offered nothing of the sort, but _did_
> "offer" to do things in its own peculiar ways instead of the standard ways,
> it was more than just disappointment.  downgrading to the NT cost me four
> weeks and 2800 lines of extra or rewritten code.
> 
> #\Erik