[Openmcl-devel] bad impressions to Lisp newbies

[R. Matthew Emerson]

Sorry that things didn't go well with your demo.

I will mention that there are in fact disk images available, which  
include pre-built IDE binaries, available in ftp.clozure.com:/pub/ 
release/1.3.  There are links to these on http://trac.clozure.com/ccl.

And as you say, there are explanations for the exmaples, but you  
weren't posting looking for explanations, so I'll spare everyone.




On Apr 24, 2009, at 2:53 AM, Alexander Repenning wrote:

> Conclusions
> ==========
>
> Draw you own conclusions but this is a true story and it does not have
> a happy ending. Newbie walked away. I guess one may claim that for us
> old Lisp hackers this would not be much of  a problem. Hey, we do not
> really need these examples, we can find a way to build, etc. I am sure
> there are good explanations why the things happened that I have
> described above. Nonetheless, it is hard to image how one could have
> left a worse impression on a new potential Lisp user. I mean, NOTHING,
> not a single example that we tried worked.
>
> Do not understand me wrong. I am not bashing CCL. On the contrary. I
> really do appreciate the work that goes into it. I would like for CCL
> to succeed but this is frustrating. Here are some more constructive
> ideas:
>
> - sources and svn access are great but please also do give us .img
> files of stable versions
> - example files are appreciated but if they do not work for whatever
> reason it may be better to move them into some kind of untested
> examples folder
>
> I still think that Lisp, if packaged up the right way (e.g., open
> source, cross platform: OpenGL + Cocoa) Lisp/CCL could become a great
> teaching tool which could actually attract, imagine that, NEW Lisp
> programmers in graphics and HCI courses. The thing most disturbing to
> me is not just how far away we are from that  point right now but that
> most people do not seem to care.
>
> Alex