espen@math.uio.no (Espen J. Vestre) (06/03/91)
In article <1991May30.193537.21239@m.cs.uiuc.edu> gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) writes: > 128Mb of virtual memory v.s. 8Mb of physical memory on a LISP machine > is because LISP is a joke. Common Lisp has thousands of useless > functions that need to be available, and are eating that swap space. > You have other junk in your environment like a compiler or a debugger > that by all rights is wasting VM 100% of the time. And the majority > of garbage collection algorithms are dogs if memory is more than 50% > occupied. Stop flaming about lisp if you know nothing about it. It is fully possible use Macintosh Allegro Common Lisp with a tiny 2MB Multifinder partition on an SE. And even after I got VM on my Mac IIX, i have no reason for giving it more than 4MB, because I don't have any BIG Common Lisp programs. The reason for the huge amount of VM that is often in use on Lisp machines is plainly that the machine is used for HUGE, experimental programs. Btw, it is NOT true that all the functions need to be present in memory. In MACL 1.3.2 they are loaded on demand. And even if you ask the system to load all of them, you can still run the system (but of course compile only toy programs) with only 1MB(!!), which then contains ALL "the junk" of CL, an excellent editor, a CL interpreter, a (good!) CL compiler and an online help system! ----------------------------------------- Espen J. Vestre Department of Mathematics University of Oslo P.o. Box 1053 Blindern N-0316 OSLO 3 NORWAY espen@math.uio.no ----------------------------------------- Disclaimer: I don't work for Apple, I just like MACL!!