[Openmcl-devel] CCL is a mess

[Glen Foy]

On May 27, 2009, at 8:17 AM, Raffael Cavallaro wrote:

> 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.

I've been working with Hemlock a lot lately, and it is professionally  
written code.  Any problems that we are currently having are more  
likely the result of the integration of Cocoa and Hemlock, not with  
Hemlock itself.

What would be Hemlock's replacement?  Fred?  I like Fred, and it was  
my first choice, but porting Fred would not be trivial.  Initially  
there would be similar bugs.

The problem, as I see, is a matter of PERCEPTION.  The IDE, including  
the Cocoa port of Hemlock, is a work in progress.  It is not ready for  
the casual user.  It is not ready for someone trying out Lisp for the  
first time.  It should be advertised as such.  There is nothing wrong  
with being a work in progress.  What's wrong here is the framing.

CCL will eventually have a terrific, world class IDE to match the  
world class compiler.  No question.

Patience --