Hi,
> Ken wrote:
>
> As a counterpoint: If you want to succeed in today's market, the ability to
> create interfaces that people can use with minimal training is critical.
> That means first-class support for Windows conventions is essential if
> Common Lisp is going to thrive as an environment for modern software.
> Gates-bashing may be a popular sport, but if you are creating software that
> people actually >>use<<, then you had better learn to live with what people
> know.
>
> Our experience with ACLPC has been completely different. It's a fine product,
> with an excellent development environment. Although I started out programming
> on model 33 teletypes, I find I am much more productive with ACLPC than I
> ever was on Unix boxes, and in most ways more productive than I was even on
> Symbolics machines. Not to say that there aren't improvements needed -- I
> can think of 10 easily that would make my life much better -- but I've been
> impressed by how helpful Franz has been when we hit critical problems. We
> simply could not create software that is smart, usable by students, and
> freely distributable without ACLPC.
>
> Ken
>
Yes, I'll second that. From our point of view ACLPC simply is
'good-enough'. Without ALCPC we *never* could have brought a product
as complex as ours onto the market with such a tiny staff and so
little capital.
We're very optimistic that ACL 5.0 will hugely improve the
stability, speed and quality of our product. But, see, even
ACLPC is not that bad: one customer has called just to tell
us that he finds the stability of our product absolutely remarkable
(thanks to the condition system).
Our first experiences with ACL 4.3.2 are very encouraging, which,
btw, works fine on Windows 95. All non-GUI code that we
have recompiled so far runs just about three times as fast.
Marcus
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Marcus Kesseler
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