[Openmcl-devel] talk on CCL

[Bruce O'Neel]

Hi,  
  
I was part of a comparison in 2001 to replace TI Explorer II machines with something else.   One platform examined was MacOS 9 running Digitool's MCL on PowerPCs.  For the application we would use I found the performance of a newish Mac with MCL to be slower but in the neighbourhood of the 15 or so year old Explorers.  But this was helped a lot because our application was both network and disk intensive, and, both of those parts had really benefited from 15 years of development.     Our application was designed to scale out so if we were short CPU we could just buy more Macs.  In 2001 we were having a problem solving the scale out problem with the "just buy more Explorers" model.   
  
In the end we didn't go that direction for a bunch of reasons, none of which had anything to do with performance.  
  
cheers  
  
bruce  
  
  

> As someone that has used a Lisp Machine for over two decades and owns  
>  one (XL1201) even now, I would say that MBA's had more to do with the  
>  death of the Lisp Machine (specifically Symbolics as a company) than  
>  any specific Common Lisp implementation. Before you can talk about  
>  replacing LispM's you need to know what the hardware was capable of  
>  doing. A Mac is not even close. I developed a system on a Symbolics  
>  3620 and then deployed that 3620 to the customer site. It was used by  
>  more than just our direct customer. I would not have attempted to  
>  deploy a Mac to do that job.  
>   
>  Symbolics had an interactive interface builder on their Lisp Machines  
>  for building Dynamic Windows interfaces. The builder application was  
>  called Frame Up.  
>   
>  Craig Lanning  
>   
>  P.S. I have actually find Clozure CL to be slower than even SBCL.  
>  Clozure CL is slower because it spends most of its time in the GC.  
>   
>  On Sun, 2018-10-21 at 21:31 -0700, Chris Hanson wrote:  
>  > As someone who’s studied their history, I seriously think that  
>  > CCL/MCL is an under-acknowledged participant in the death of Lisp  
>  > Machines: When you could use a Macintosh for development nearly as  
>  > effectively as a Lisp Machine for barely a tenth the cost (or even  
>  > less), and deploy on Macintosh as well, why spend all that money on  
>  > specialized hardware? Especially since by the 1990s the Lisp Machines  
>  > were falling far behind on performance.  
>  >  
>  > -- Chris  
>  >  
>  > > On Oct 19, 2018, at 8:55 AM, Ron Garret wrote:  
>  > >  
>  > > " an intrepid band of hackers formed a little company called Coral  
>  > > Software. And Coral Common Lisp was their product that they managed  
>  > > to put together, and it came out in 1987, and … they had a Common  
>  > > Lisp (it didn’t have CLOS, so it was CLTL1), [which] ran on a 1MB  
>  > > Macintosh Plus, this incredibly weak hardware. So that was a real  
>  > > accomplishment.”  
>  > >  
>  > > Not only did they have a CL that ran on a 1MB Mac Plus, it had an  
>  > > IDE! And not only did it have an IDE, it had one of the best IDEs  
>  > > ever. You can still run it on emulators today, and it is still  
>  > > usable — even competitive — today. It had an interactive interface  
>  > > builder that is still to this day superior to anything I have seen  
>  > > anywhere. I still miss it. (I used the original CCL to do my  
>  > > masters thesis back in 1987 and it spoiled me on IDEs for  
>  > > life. I’ve been a grumpy old man ever since.)  
>  > >  
>  > > I would rank the original CCL as a technical achievement on a par  
>  > > with the Macintosh itself.  
>  > >  
>  > > rg  
>  > >  
>  > >  
>  > > On Oct 18, 2018, at 5:12 PM, R. Matthew Emerson  
>  > > wrote:  
>  > >  
>  > > > I was invited to give a talk at this year’s European Lisp  
>  > > > Symposium in Marbella, Spain. It was a great conference. I  
>  > > > highly recommend that you try to attend next the next one if you  
>  > > > possibly can. It will be in Genoa, Italy. See  
>  > > > https://european-lisp-symposium.org.  
>  > > >  
>  > > > Anyway, I prepared a web site that contains a video of the talk  
>  > > > and also a written transcript with slides included in the text in  
>  > > > the appropriate places.  
>  > > >  
>  > > > The link is http://thisoldlisp.com/talks/els-2018/  
>  > > >  
>  > > > It’s not really very technical in nature (it’s meant to be  
>  > > > entertaining and encouraging), but maybe some of you would enjoy  
>  > > > it.  
>  > > >  
>  > > >  
>  > > > _______________________________________________  
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>  > > > Openmcl-devel at clozure.com  
>  > > > https://lists.clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel  
>  > >  
>  > > _______________________________________________  
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>  > > Openmcl-devel at clozure.com  
>  > > https://lists.clozure.com/mailman/listinfo/openmcl-devel  
>  >  
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>   
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