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One more thing... [besides noting that auto-correct turned "what"
into "when" on the first line]...<br>
<br>
In addition to maintainers, CCL needs what Apple would call
"evangelists."<br>
By this I mean kinda "influencers" / promoters who, for example, get
college professors interested in CCL<br>
so more students might "cut their teeth" on CCL instead of on
another Common Lisp (or Racket or Scheme).<br>
<br>
Ron noted to me how easy CCL made it to evaluate expression in the
built-in editor.<br>
If we focus and improve on the <i>usability</i> of CCL's IDE we
might pick up some new users.<br>
No professor or TA wants to keep answering FAQs on how to use an
IDE. <br>
Students don't need extra hassles; they just want to finish their
problem set.<br>
I personally like SLIME, but there are many people for whom emacs
has too tall a learning curve.<br>
Let's respect this preference.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/5/24 2:34 PM, Tim McNerney wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:865424e3-e391-4ec6-8c2c-b7adf599cdd7@media.mit.edu">
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There is value in when you are saying, Nicolas.<br>
<br>
Since Clozure Associates dissolved its LLC and its founders
retired,<br>
it is now up to <u>us as a community</u> to carry the torch and
maintain CCL.<br>
There is no "somebody else" to do it for us. <br>
We all have to answer questions.<br>
We all have to fix bugs. <br>
We all have to make sure bug fixes are tested, checked in, and
patches created.<br>
There is an argument that a smaller "core" of maintainers oversee
releases,<br>
but if we keep adding to a regression suite and are diligent about
running it,<br>
anyone should be able to make a release, as long as they keep in
communication.<br>
Where "release" means a carefully curated and extensively tested
build.<br>
<br>
As for CCL's "demise being greatly exaggerated," I've been seeing
clear evidence that<br>
there is decreasing opportunity to run a viable business licensing
proprietary CLs.<br>
Open source Common Lisps are the way to go.<br>
My apologies to the maintainers of SBCL, but it is weighed down by
lots of pet projects.<br>
CCL is a highly optimized, complex-but-lean, "diamond."<br>
I back the "diamond" approach.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 1/5/24 2:13 PM, Nicolas Martyanoff
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:877cknh9uc.fsf@valhala.localdomain">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Ron Garret <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:ron@flownet.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"><ron@flownet.com></a> writes:
</pre>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">On Jan 5, 2024, at 5:41 AM, Tim McNerney <a
class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:mc@media.mit.edu"
moz-do-not-send="true"><mc@media.mit.edu></a> wrote:
It's not too late to fix this flaw. What's the harm?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">Bikeshedding. If we don't get the M1 port done, CCL is dead. We need to focus.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-quote-pre" wrap="">While I have no doubt that not having a M1 port is a deal breaker for
developers working on MacOS, I would argue that the lack of regular
releases and the multitude of open issues and pull requests (i.e. the
lack of maintenance) is what is killing CCL.
Running on Apple Silicon is not going to fix the multitude of issues you
might encounter on any platform. As an example, a couple months ago I
try starting to write a patch for CCL, spent way too much time trying to
decipher code with no comment or type declaration, then realized that
CCL would randomly segfault when rebuilding itself (Linux/x86_64).
Google showed me at least one person having encountered the exact same
problem before, and zero answers. I went back to SBCL and will probably
drop CCL support from my projects because what is the point?
I fully understand that no one at Clozure has the time or money to
invest on CCL and I'm not blaming anyone; it is already admirable of
them to have built CCL and released it under a free license. But
This is just what happens in the Open Source world when no one forks an
unmaintained project, especially for a language which while not dead is
starting to smell really funny.
</pre>
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