[Openmcl-devel] CCL is a mess

[Raffael Cavallaro]

On May 26, 2009, at 9:45 PM, Alexander Repenning wrote:

>>
>>
>>
>> Detailed issues: 80% of the examples do not run as condition
>> is thrown about TITLE missing. It would be good if the example code
>> within the examples was uncommented and ran on 'compile and load  
>> file'.

With respect, these defects are particular to xlui and its example  
code (which is commented out, and which often throws errors when  
executed complaining of TITLE missing). They have nothing to do with  
CCL itself.

>> The IDE is abysmally bad to the point of becoming a mockery of  
>> Lisp. Extremelly unstable, beach balls all the time seemingly for  
>> no reason at all, lack of customization, stupid defaults, alien  
>> look & feel with no relevance to Apple HIG. Most importantly: It  
>> does not inspire confidence for someone to make the investment and  
>> learn/use lisp.

And these are, at base, really all about Hemlock. I've felt similar  
things myself at times. In just about every case, I could trace the  
instability to Hemlock, not CCL itself.

That said, I think the CCL maintainers (i.e., Clozure) could do  
themselves a big favor in terms of perception if they either replaced  
Hemlock entirely, or reviewed its code closely. It's filled with bugs  
whose affects are glaringly obvious to casual users, and which give  
the false impression that all of CCL is as unstable as Hemlock.  
Recently an "interesting" behavior has appeared in trunk: a Cmd-V  
paste will do nothing for over a full second, then the pasted text  
will suddenly appear. I suppose this is better than having it paste  
the wrong text as it formerly did, but it makes CCL look much lamer  
than it actually is.


regards,

Ralph

Raffael Cavallaro, Ph.D.
raffaelcavallaro at mac.com