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 | | From: | devmail at runbox.com | | Subject: | Continued... | | Date: | 20 Jan 2005 20:57:16 -0800 |
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 | I want to take not only the language features into account, but also
the existing tools, frameworks and code libraries that would help or
hinder my productivity.
I think continuation-based web tools make web development easier, so
I'm trying to compare and contrast the benefits of UnCommon Web and
Seaside. Seaside seems to be a more complete framework, and to have
more lucid documentation. I also know a few companies that are
confident enough with Seaside to use it for production systems now,
while I know very little about UCW. I don't fully understand all the
issues with either, though.
Emacs scares me (there, I said it!) Smalltalk seems to have the more
productive environment...but Lisp seems to have more open-source code
available.
I'm developing and deploying on OS X, with FreeBSD as a possible
deployment option in the distant future. I work with a university
part-time, and I have access to a few racks of XServes...I know almost
nothing about Unix beyond the very basics, though, so the pretty OS X
interfaces provide me some comfort :-)
I'm mainly looking at SBCL or LW for Lisp implementations, or VW as
the Smalltalk implementation. [I prefer to avoid any type of
royalty/runtime scenario, if possible, and (as I said) I'm working on
OS X. These implementations also work with the various frameworks and
libraries I'm interested in so far. I have no problem paying for
commercial tools if they help me get the job done.]
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| | From: | Pascal Costanza | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Fri, 21 Jan 2005 11:43:40 +0100 |
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| devmail@runbox.com wrote:
> Emacs scares me (there, I said it!) Smalltalk seems to have the more
> productive environment...but Lisp seems to have more open-source code
> available.
>
> I'm developing and deploying on OS X, with FreeBSD as a possible
> deployment option in the distant future.
LispWorks for Macintosh has an excellent IDE and, what's more important
here, supports both Mac and Emacs key bindings. Since on a Mac, the
Control and Command keys don't interfere with each other, this provides
a very nice path to smoothly try out some Emacs key bindings and learn
them over time without being thrown completely in the cold water.
I have been very slow in understanding what the advantages of Emacs are,
but it has started to make sense to me by now.
Pascal
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| | From: | Espen Vestre | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 09:59:51 +0100 |
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| Trent Buck writes:
> A lot of people -- especially those who used UNIX at school -- grew up
> with Emacs. Long-time emacs users have a *lot* of momentum; switching
> to *any* other editor would take a big effort for us.
Well, it's close enough to Emacs to me. Some things really annoy me
(like C-X 2 opening a second window instead of splitting the pane),
but all in all I think the tight integration with the debugging tools
is worth the small pain of learning to operate two flavors of emacs
at the same time (But then my first exposure to emacs was using two
different Emacs clones (AMIS and FINE) more than 20 years ago, and
my long-time favourite "emacs" was FRED, so I'm sort of used to working
with several flavors of emacs from day one).
--
(espen)
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| | From: | Trent Buck | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:09:54 GMT |
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| Up spake devmail@runbox.com:
> Are there any reasons NOT to use the LW editor?
A lot of people -- especially those who used UNIX at school -- grew up
with Emacs. Long-time emacs users have a *lot* of momentum; switching
to *any* other editor would take a big effort for us.
--
-trent
Capitalism had been tried. Communism has been tried. Even Henry George's
Single Tax has been tried, in Australia. Fascism, feudalism and
mysticism have been tried. Anarchism has never been tried.
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| | From: | Tim May | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Sun, 23 Jan 2005 22:24:20 -0800 |
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| In article <20050124160955.3c21b8c6@harpo.marx>, Trent Buck
wrote:
> Up spake devmail@runbox.com:
> > Are there any reasons NOT to use the LW editor?
>
> A lot of people -- especially those who used UNIX at school -- grew up
> with Emacs. Long-time emacs users have a *lot* of momentum; switching
> to *any* other editor would take a big effort for us.
Learning new editor commands is fairly easy. About 25 years ago I was
using EDT commands in VAX/VMS (and a few other editors before that). By
1984 I was using ZMACS, an EMACS variant, on a Symbolics 3670 Lisp
Machine. Later, I used other editors, some EMACS-like, some just
cursor-based. (Meaning, "point and click.")
Today, I favor Haskell as a language, using as an editor either Xemacs
on a Mac or Eclipse, the de facto standard environment for many
languages.
My point is that to say that students using UNIX insist on EMACS is
misleading. They, of course, can insist on EMACS, and work elsewhere.
To any managers reading this, hiring someone on the basis of which
_editor_ they prefer or don't prefer is the height of silliness.
--Tim May
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| | From: | BR | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:40:22 -0500 |
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| On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 05:09:54 +0000, Trent Buck wrote:
> Up spake devmail@runbox.com:
>> Are there any reasons NOT to use the LW editor?
>
> A lot of people -- especially those who used UNIX at school -- grew up
> with Emacs. Long-time emacs users have a *lot* of momentum; switching
> to *any* other editor would take a big effort for us.
I'm thinking one of these with a good editor would be perfect.
http://kinesis-ergo.com/professional.htm
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| | From: | Trent Buck | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Mon, 24 Jan 2005 07:58:15 GMT |
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| Up spake Tim May:
> > > Are there any reasons NOT to use the LW editor?
> >
> > A lot of people -- especially those who used UNIX at school -- grew up
> > with Emacs. Long-time emacs users have a *lot* of momentum; switching
> > to *any* other editor would take a big effort for us.
>
> Learning new editor commands is fairly easy.
I disagree. I haven't used Eclipse (mainly because I have had Bad
Experiences with Java and thus Eclipse is guilty by association). But I
wonder, how I'd do rectangular cuts? Or comment-dwim, or indent-region,
or info-lookup-symbol, or cyclebuffer-forward, or windmove-right? How
do I define derived modes?
Learning new bindings for basics (i.e. cut and past) might be easy, but
there's a *lot* more to it than that.
> My point is that to say that students using UNIX insist on EMACS is
> misleading. They, of course, can insist on EMACS, and work elsewhere.
Perhaps I was unclear, or missed something because I jumped into the
conversation at a late stage.
I'm thinking of a situation like this:
Boss: "I need this and this and this, and the environment is
LispWorks."
New Employee: "Sure, I can do that. Can I keep using Emacs?"
Boss: "Yeah, a couple of other engineers do that too."
I have a lot of experience using emacs. Having to relearn all that for
a different editor would be a lot of effort; if I can keep using Emacs I
can start working right away. Not to mention that I manage files,
shells, mail, news, versions, tasks and wikis and browse the web from
within emacs, and having to manage code in a different application
entirely would be unappetising to say the least.
> To any managers reading this, hiring someone on the basis of which
> _editor_ they prefer or don't prefer is the height of silliness.
Right. And so is forcing a particular editor on engineers.
--
-trent
For I am no longer a stranger in the ways of woman.
You finally killed one, eh?
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| | From: | Pedro Pinto | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | Sat, 22 Jan 2005 00:42:13 GMT |
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| Perhaps you should investigate Scheme as well as Lisp. In particular
DrScheme[1] provides a very gentle learning curve, while at same time
offering enough libraries to accomplish real work (there are commercial
apps written in it). As a bonus, the DrScheme web server I believe was
one of the first, if not the first, to support continuations. There are
also Java based Schemes which give you access to the Java API [2].
Sounds like you have an interesting few months ahead, best of luck,
-pp
[1] http://www.plt-scheme.org/
[2] http://sisc.sourceforge.net/
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| | From: | devmail at runbox.com | | Subject: | Re: Continued... | | Date: | 23 Jan 2005 20:37:08 -0800 |
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| This is good to know, Pascal. Mac key binding may ease my transition.
Are there any reasons NOT to use the LW editor? I ask only because it
seems very few people use it, relative to other options, even those who
predominantly use LW...?
Is it possible to use SBCL and the LW editor? Would that be called
'running SBCL as an inferior Lisp' to the LispWorks editor?
- Sergei
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