TAYLOR%PLU@AMES-IO.ARPA.UUCP (02/27/87)
NOTE: This posting is being sent to the AILIST, SLUG, TI, XEROX, SUN
and WorkStation bulletin boards
Here at the AI Research & Applications Branch - NASA Ames Research
Center, we are planning to buy several Lisp or possibly non-Lisp
workstations in the near future and want to look at alternatives to
Symbolics, of which we have 7 + a 3600 file server at the present
time.
Possible alternatives are (in no particular order):
Explorer
Xerox 1186
Sun
Vax station
LMI
Apollo
Several things that concern us are:
Are we maximizing productivity and minimizing cost in our
current environment ? How can we accomplish these goals in
the future ?
Is our current environment of Lisp Machine workstations going
to continue to offer us the best development environment ?
General purpose workstations offering Lisp, Prolog, Pascal,
FORTRAN, C, etc, are coming on strong.
We will be supporting outside users who have non-Symbolics
equipment; what is the most portable development/delivery
environment that we could have, consistent with our software
requirements ? (see below)
If we move to a non-Symbolics environment, what environment
will minimize the portability costs ?
Our software requirements are object oriented Lisp, Prolog, two-way
calling interface between Lisp & Prolog, rich window system/graphics
(monochrome and color) facilities and a productive development
environment.
We would appreciate any comments, experiences and recommendations of
people who have used two or more of the above Lispms/work stations.
We are familiar with two Lispm comparisions which have appeared on
bboards:
Dandelion vs Symbolics, 17 Sep 86, steve@siemens.UUCP
Explorer vs Symbolics, 23 Oct 86, miller@ur-acorn.ARPA
In order to liven up this discussion, we thought the repetition of
some previous bboard claims about Lispm/workstation capabilities
would elicit honest, deeply-held opinions! Here goes:
1. The Symbolics window debugger is unmatched anywhere.
2. Symbolics' on-line documentation is much better than TI's
BUT
TI's suggestion system is much better than Symbolics'.
3. Symbolics' networking is much better than TI and better in
general.
4. With Symbolics GC, must boot ea. 14 day.
With TI GC (no ephemeral exists) must boot ea 0.5 day
5. Symbolics and TI are so similar that it is easy to carry skills
back and forth.
6. Xerox's window system is easy to use but less powerful than
Symbolics.
7. Xerox's GC is really a 'reference counter' and therefore CAN'T
reclaim circular lists. Other than that, however, Xerox's GC is
much better than Symbolics.
8. VAX's GC takes 6 sec (with 9 meg) while Symbolics' takes 1 hr.
9. VAX must have >5 Meg to be useful.
10. VAX's LISP Language Sensitive Editor is about as useful as EMACS.
11. A SUN without disks is useless.
Furthermore, here are a few issues to flame on -
- hardware - failure rates, ease of fault analysis
- window systems
- networking
- namespace
- garbage collection
- Initial ease of use / overall user interface.
- Power for highly trained user
- editors
- online documentation - completeness, clarity
- performance metering
- debuging tools
- maximum paging space
- speed
To try to keep this discussion in one central place and since I do
not subscribe to all the bboards to which this is being posted, I
would suggest (subject to Ken Laws veto) that all responses be posted
to the AIList (AIList@sri-stripe.ARPA). However e-mail to me if you
have any problems with that proposal.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Taylor - Sterling Software, MS 244-17,
NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035
arpanet: taylor@ames-pluto.ARPA
usenet: ..!ames!plu.decnet!taylor
phone : (415)694-6525