Best Lisp for Windows NT?
please-reply...@thank.you
much does Allegro CL cost for NT?
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
They don't seem to say anywhere in their site
how much they actually charge for CL 5 for
Windows. Is it one of those deals where if you
have to ask how much it is you can't afford it?
Erik Naggum
| They don't seem to say anywhere in their site how much they actually
| charge for CL 5 for Windows. Is it one of those deals where if you have
| to ask how much it is you can't afford it?
it is amusing to watch how people react when their assumptions fail.
call them up and ask, or send mail to _them_, to find out.
#:Erik
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
It's a reasonable assumption that when a company fails
to publish its prices, the prices must be very high, to
justify getting marketing personnel involved in every sale.
Contrast that to Dolphin Smalltalk, from Object Arts. You
can order it online and download it immediately. All
products from Object Arts are sold that way. Their price
structure reflects the lower marketing cost of doing it
that way. Dolphin Smalltalk is $29 for personal use and
$129 with unlimited commercial application deployment.
Kent M Pitman
> It's a reasonable assumption that when a company fails
> to publish its prices, the prices must be very high, to
> justify getting marketing personnel involved in every sale.
I recently investigated the price of dedicated telephone lines from my
house to the net and found that many higher priced agents advertise
their price and a number of more competitively priced ones do not,
perhaps either because they are better able to dynamically offer
discounts of various forms and also because by establishing contact,
they improve the possibility of future relationships which might net
them more even if they have a low-cost option. The place I found with
the very lowest price on the phone service had not advertised its
prices. The vendor I'm switching from, which costs easily 2-4 times
as much had its prices prominently posted at its web site since they
didn't vary much and it was not a big maintenance cost for them to say
"this is it, love it or leave it".
I think the moral is that few $29 products of any kind have a phone
call involved because the price of the phone call quickly exceeds $29
for equipment and personnel costs. But that's a fixed threshold that
isn't really predictive of what happens above that very, very low-end.
Anything that's $100 or more can generally build in the cost of a
phone call or two without losing all its value, and is still
potentially cheap for quality software. Consequently, I wouldn't read
anything into the lack of published prices unless you think anything
over $29 is "expensive"... I'm surprised anyone with a computer to
type such a statement on can really say such a thing with a straight
face. I'm reminded of something someone said once about the US--that
it was the only company in the world where even the poorest people
often drive to the protest rallies where they carry the signs about
how underpaid they are... whoever said it probably should have
mentioned they heard about the rally on their tv...
Erik Naggum
| It's a reasonable assumption ...
you should instead be justifying your _response_ when this assumption
failed. I don't care what your assumptions are, and there's no need to
defend it, unless you want to make the picture of how you react when your
assumptions fail even more complete, but why bother?
you could have found the prices by now, too.
#:Erik
Dobes Vandermeer
>
> * please-reply...@thank.you
> | to publish its prices, the prices must be very high, to
> | justify getting marketing personnel involved in every sale.
>
Yes, but he would have discovered exactly what he'd expect, that the
prices are too high to be reasonable for an individual who wants to do
serious programming (i.e. getting the professional or enterprise
version) without paying serious prices.
I myself was in that boat and also found it quite frusterating that the
prices weren't listed. If they were I probably would have just surfed
somewhere else in search of a LISP environment, but instead I ended up
taking the time to ask them, which was probably of a waste of their time
and mine, because I was looking for something in the MSVC 5 pricing
range (or less; MSVC is a more complete product) and found something
along the lines of a year's tuition to get the version I needed
(Enterprise, for threads and sockets).
So, when you take the actual facts into acount, his initial assumption
is TRUE, and you, Erik Naggum, are wasting all of our times with your
vacuous commentary. I find it disgusting that you find it "amusing to
watch how people react when their assumptions fail" in a public forum.
Send any flaming replies to do...@mindless.com
CU
Dobes
Erik Naggum
| Yes, but he would have discovered exactly what he'd expect, that the
| prices are too high to be reasonable for an individual who wants to do
| serious programming (i.e. getting the professional or enterprise version)
| without paying serious prices.
you seem to assume that he's _initially_ after a means of doing serious
programming. I'm not sure this assumption holds at all. in any case,
what kind of _serious_ programming is it if you can't afford Franz'
licenses? the problem is how to get to know Allegro CL in the first
place, not how to make money once you can defend the cost.
incidentally, I know for a fact that Franz Inc has a liberal evaluation
period if you are in position to purchase at some later time. again, if
you can't scrounge up the funds during that period, what _are_ you doing?
in the interest of less hits on misinformation by the search bots, I have
not commented on your faulty assumptions on what you would need to buy.
incidentally, "discovering exactly what you expect" before actually
knowing anything for a fact means you're either excessively brilliant or
blinded by prejudice. if you're excessively brilliant, it seems unlikely
that you can't find someone else to fund your license fee for you. this
leaves one option.
when it comes to the actual pricing, I also know for a fact that Franz
Inc has been burnt by the free Linux offering. it seems fair to conclude
that those who want dirt cheap or free stuff are less honest about it
than those who find ways to pay the regular price. I'm not sure it's a
good idea to try to pacify them any more than it makes sense to pacify
screaming kids by giving them what they want, either.
in the projects where I have introduced Allegro CL to the client, the
cost of the entire project has dwarfed the cost of the licenses by a
factor of at _least_ 10. I think this is entirely reasonable, and don't
see a problem with it at all. as long as it is possible to evaluate the
product realistically before coughing up the dough, it should be easy to
show that the other development costs dwarf the licensing costs.
I must therefore assume that those who complain are either working for
free, do not plan on making any money, or are not doing serious work.
for the latter category, there's the Linux offering or the personal
edition. for the former categories, I'm not quite certain what the
expectations are. should Franz Inc fund you instead of you getting
someone to fund you to pay Franz Inc? I don't think that is reasonable.
however, I'd be willing to help fund a Lisp Programmer's Charity so poor
folks could get scholarships and free licenses to the extent that they
don't get it on their own -- Franz Inc _has_ given away licenses before,
but it seems to require a little different approach than to whine on
comp.lang.lisp since you guys haven't gotten what you want. how about a
change of tactics?
| So, when you take the actual facts into acount, his initial assumption
| is TRUE, and you, Erik Naggum, are wasting all of our times with your
| vacuous commentary. I find it disgusting that you find it "amusing to
| watch how people react when their assumptions fail" in a public forum.
on the contrary, your own assumptions are equally, if not more, amusing.
| Send any flaming replies to do...@mindless.com
what the hell good would that do? I mail compliments, post criticism.
#:Erik
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
> licenses? the problem is how to get to know Allegro CL in the first
> place, not how to make money once you can defend the cost.
Generating end-user application executable files and/or
components, DLL's, etc., is a big part of getting to know
the product. I'm not talking about getting to know the
language, but getting to know the product. Most software
development environments have serious problems, and
most of those problems come to light when actually using
them for real work, not just evaluating them.
> incidentally, I know for a fact that Franz Inc has a liberal evaluation
Do they mention it anywhere on their web site? They seem
to be pretty tight with information in general, even when
contacted directly. Before they will even give any hints of
prices, they want all kinds of information about who wants
to know. The price of CL5 for Windows seems to be about
$3000, but they won't say that until they ask a lot of
questions.
In any case, my questions were not just about Franz, but
about Lisp vendors in general. I wanted to know the best
Lisp for Windows NT. Price is a factor, but so are quality
and features. Being able to generate executables, DLL's,
components, etc. I want to compare them with what's
available for other languages. That's a big factor in the
selection of a language for a new project.
Raymond Toy
Dobes> Yes, but he would have discovered exactly what he'd expect, that the
Dobes> prices are too high to be reasonable for an individual who wants to do
Dobes> serious programming (i.e. getting the professional or enterprise
Dobes> version) without paying serious prices.
Dobes> I myself was in that boat and also found it quite frusterating that the
Dobes> prices weren't listed. If they were I probably would have just surfed
Dobes> somewhere else in search of a LISP environment, but instead I ended up
Dobes> taking the time to ask them, which was probably of a waste of their time
Dobes> and mine, because I was looking for something in the MSVC 5 pricing
Dobes> range (or less; MSVC is a more complete product) and found something
Dobes> along the lines of a year's tuition to get the version I needed
Dobes> (Enterprise, for threads and sockets).
I can't imagine why any vendor wouldn't tell a potential customer how
much their product costs. By not telling, they've certainly lost a
sale, so they lose nothing by telling.
In any case, I vaguely recall that, when Harlequin used to advertise
prices on their web site, the full Lispworks system cost about $500
for Windows and Unix(!). If this is still true, then it's about 1/2
the price for a new full copy of professional MS Visual C++. It's in
the same ballpark, at least
Ray
Erik Naggum
| Generating end-user application executable files and/or components,
| DLL's, etc., is a big part of getting to know the product. I'm not
| talking about getting to know the language, but getting to know the
| product. Most software development environments have serious problems,
| and most of those problems come to light when actually using them for
| real work, not just evaluating them.
I completely agree. it seems, however, that you don't know what Franz
Inc means by "evaluation", whereas I do, so I'll answer the question you
failed to ask: the evaluation period gives you access to the maximal set
of features that you _might_ buy, so you can decide what you need, _and_
have time to try it out. my experience is that this period is long
enough to do serious work and see if it works out for you.
| Do they mention it anywhere on their web site?
I'm not sure they like that I try to tell you in what _particular_ ways
they are really nice guys. in general, Franz Inc is excessively helpful
to real peple -- those who make contact with them. by excessively I mean
that they have obviously been burned by being too helpful to some people
and you should not be surprised that those are the people who don't show
their faces or make themselves fully known. Franz Inc is not an
over-the-counter software vendor. they actually want to know you, like a
partner in the development process, not just a prostitute who hopes you
don't call again with followup questions and "bug" reports.
| They seem to be pretty tight with information in general, even when
| contacted directly.
I regard them as somewhat protective, but with every right to be so, and
once you get to know these guys, you feel "inside" the same protective
shield that keeps other bad things out. I can't speak for others, but it
is one of the reasons I decided to work closer with them.
| Before they will even give any hints of prices, they want all kinds of
| information about who wants to know. The price of CL5 for Windows seems
| to be about $3000, but they won't say that until they ask a lot of
| questions.
they do this to give you the lowest price for your customer category.
| In any case, my questions were not just about Franz, but about Lisp
| vendors in general. I wanted to know the best Lisp for Windows NT.
| Price is a factor, but so are quality and features. Being able to
| generate executables, DLL's, components, etc. I want to compare them
| with what's available for other languages. That's a big factor in the
| selection of a language for a new project.
I agree. I also tend to bring up Lisp when a project has failed and is
no longer "new", i.e., when the complexity of the project is better known.
#:Erik
Erik Naggum
| I can't imagine why any vendor wouldn't tell a potential customer how
| much their product costs. By not telling, they've certainly lost a sale,
| so they lose nothing by telling.
why do you think your way of telling and your time of telling is the only
one? of course every vendor tells potential customers how much they want
for the product! the issue is when and how, not whether to tell.
#:Erik
Raymond Toy
Erik> * Raymond Toy <t...@rtp.ericsson.se>
Erik> | I can't imagine why any vendor wouldn't tell a potential customer how
Erik> | much their product costs. By not telling, they've certainly lost a sale,
Erik> | so they lose nothing by telling.
Erik> why do you think your way of telling and your time of telling is the only
Erik> one? of course every vendor tells potential customers how much they want
Erik> for the product! the issue is when and how, not whether to tell.
You've obviously read far more into my reply than I meant. My
response to Dobes was, in essence, go ask the vendor for a price, just
as you did in another message to someone else. I was emphasizing that
a vendor would surely tell you, eventually.
A while ago, I did ask Franz for a price quote. They very promptly
sent a quote for me.
Ray
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
> I completely agree. it seems, however, that you don't know what Franz
> Inc means by "evaluation", whereas I do, so I'll answer the question you
Ok, once they get to know you, to be sure you're
a genuine prospect, they let you do an extensive
evaluation. Good. But, before they get to know
me, I want some kind of evidence that their product
is even worth considering at all. I want to see a
bunch of sample programs and the resulting
executables. I have a hunch the executables will
be too big. I'm not seriously interested in ACL5
yet, and won't be until that hunch is proven wrong.
They obviously only want to give evaluation copies
to serious prospects, and I'm not one yet.
I evaluated Dolpin Smalltalk, ISE Eiffel, and Harlquin
Dylan, without spending much time learning any of
those languages, and without becoming a serious
prospect for any of them. I still am evaluating all three
of them in my spare time. Franz would be welcome to
add their product to that group, if I didn't have to jump
through hoops and try to convince them I was a
serious prospect. Their free version would not do,
because my evaluations have included building
executables and comparing their sizes, but the free
version of ACL5 does not build executables.
Right now, what I would recommend Franz do to
make their product more popular, would be to put
a bunch of sample programs on their website, with
the Lisp source code and with executables, DLL's,
components, etc., built from that source code with
their product. People need to see the results, even
more than they need to see the development
environment. If a programmer can show his boss a
program, run it and show that it looks like any other
program, and how how big it is, and that it will run
on different computers, and then say to his boss,
that program was built with ACL5; that alone could
go a long way towards getting Lisp more accepted.
Erik Naggum
| Ok, once they get to know you, to be sure you're a genuine prospect, they
| let you do an extensive evaluation. Good. But, before they get to know
| me, I want some kind of evidence that their product is even worth
| considering at all. I want to see a bunch of sample programs and the
| resulting executables. I have a hunch the executables will be too big.
| I'm not seriously interested in ACL5 yet, and won't be until that hunch
| is proven wrong. They obviously only want to give evaluation copies to
| serious prospects, and I'm not one yet.
as I have already said, the problem is getting to know Allegro CL (or any
Common Lisp environment, actually) to begin with. I recognize your
issue. I just don't think you're approaching it in a constructive way.
incidentally, I don't think hunches can be proven either right or wrong.
I think hunches are good because they allow me not to waste a lot of time
thinking about something that my gut feeling rejects, so I expect your
hunches to be on my side if I'm selling Common Lisp and you approach me.
if you approach me with a bad hunch and want proof your hunch is wrong, I
don't think I have the time (or inclination) to counsel you out of it.
personally, I don't think executable size matters at all, so I'm
obviously not being helpful to your particular quest, but let me show you
just how little executable (actually, image) size matters to me: I
discovered that by precomputing the decimal representation of five-digit
numbers and inlining their printing, my whole application sped up by a
factor of 8. that's a 500,000-character string just wasting space. I
had already precomputed the break-out of 400 years of calendar data and
86400 seconds of time data, which added another megabyte to my image, but
those, too, were very serious space/time tradeoffs. it is helpful if you
consider that any proper function returns the same value every time it's
called, and so can be precomputed, at potentially huge space costs. I
have been willing to dispense with 1.5 megabytes of memory in exchange
for very close to zero cost in some bottle-neck operations.
| Right now, what I would recommend Franz do to make their product more
| popular, would be to put a bunch of sample programs on their website,
| with the Lisp source code and with executables, DLL's, components, etc.,
| built from that source code with their product. People need to see the
| results, even more than they need to see the development environment.
_which_ people would that be?
| If a programmer can show his boss a program, run it and show that it
| looks like any other program, and how how big it is, and that it will run
| on different computers, and then say to his boss, that program was built
| with ACL5; that alone could go a long way towards getting Lisp more
| accepted.
I honestly don't think so.
I do think there's a place for Common Lisp in the low end of the market,
I just don't know how to approach that market, and I'm worried that the
Lisp vendors will squander their efforts at trying to attact people who
think Bill Gates is a hero and his products are safe investments, or,
even worse: the people who think he's a criminal and his products are
shit, but _still_ buy them and expect others to take the blame when they
hit the fan.
#:Erik
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
> I do think there's a place for Common Lisp in the low end of the market,
> I just don't know how to approach that market, and I'm worried that the
> Lisp vendors will squander their efforts at trying to attact people who
> think Bill Gates is a hero and his products are safe investments, or,
> even worse: the people who think he's a criminal and his products are
> shit, but _still_ buy them and expect others to take the blame when they
> hit the fan.
The critical mass of Windows is undeniable. Almost any
app you write for it will find a market. The best machine
for running Lisp would have gigabytes of RAM and would
be expensive. Besides the money to buy it, you need the
time to spend on it. If you're a typical Unix programmer,
you don't have a lot of spare time. But if you write a few
popular Windows apps in your spare time, you can retire,
buy your dream Lisp machine, and spend all your time on it.
But wouldn't it be so much better to write those few popular
Windows apps in Lisp than in VC++?
please-reply...@thank.you
wrote:
> personally, I don't think executable size matters at all, so I'm
> obviously not being helpful to your particular quest, but let me show you
> just how little executable (actually, image) size matters to me: I
The reason why it matters to me is because I often send
executables as email attachments.
Erik Naggum
| The critical mass of Windows is undeniable.
I deny it. Windows is completely irrelevant. and that, incidentally, is
its _current_ strength, because the irrelevant is something you choose
without thinking about it. however, the irrelevant may lose its position
overnight, and so Bill Gates has every right to be paranoid about it.
| The best machine for running Lisp would have gigabytes of RAM and would
| be expensive.
huh? what the hell are you talking about?
| If you're a typical Unix programmer, you don't have a lot of spare time.
huh? where do _get_ these notions?
| But if you write a few popular Windows apps in your spare time, you can
| retire, buy your dream Lisp machine, and spend all your time on it.
geez. I have seen people who plan to make their fortune playing the
lottery have a better grasp on reality than this.
| But wouldn't it be so much better to write those few popular Windows apps
| in Lisp than in VC++?
no, it wouldn't. I think it's good that VC++ "owns" the Windows market,
because Windows will vanish without a trace, and the languages and tools
that people associate with Windows will go with it.
#:Erik
Erik Naggum
| The reason why it matters to me is because I often send executables as
| email attachments.
then you're in luck. instead of sending the entire executable, you can
get away with sending the code to be loaded into the Lisp world. you can
also ship patches instead of entire new versions.
just because you have found a solution doesn't mean every problem fits it.
#:Erik
Kent M Pitman
> The best machine for running Lisp would have gigabytes of RAM and
> would be expensive.
I don't think this is so at all. Most Lisps with full compiler on
board probably take up less space than explorer or netscape. Frankly,
I bet you could write your own custom web browser in a typical Lisp,
keeping the compiler and all the other development environment in the
delivered image, and STILL end up with an environment not
substantially larger than a typical commercial web browser. "Real"
applications in non-Lisp are pretty darned big, and grow huger with
eery release, while Lisp has held its ground for a long time.
Larry Hunter
please-reply...@thank.you writes:
> The best machine for running Lisp would have gigabytes of RAM and
> would be expensive.
To which Kent Pitman replies:
> I don't think this is so at all. Most Lisps with full compiler on
> board probably take up less space than explorer or netscape.
But I might add, in addition to agreeing with Kent, that a big, fast machine
with gigabytes of RAM running lisp is one of the most productive research
computing environments imaginable.
[I'm running Franz ACL on a 4 processor SGI Origin 2000 with 4GB ram, and
using every bit of it. Whoo-whee!]
Larry
--
Lawrence Hunter, PhD.
Section Chief, Molecular Statistics and Bioinformatics
National Cancer Institute, MS-9015 tel: +1 (301) 402-0389
7550 Wisconsin Ave., Room 3C06 fax: +1 (301) 480-0223
Bethesda, MD 20892-9015 email: lhu...@nih.gov
Sunil Mishra
> But I might add, in addition to agreeing with Kent, that a big, fast machine
> with gigabytes of RAM running lisp is one of the most productive research
> computing environments imaginable.
>
> [I'm running Franz ACL on a 4 processor SGI Origin 2000 with 4GB ram, and
> using every bit of it. Whoo-whee!]
>
> Larry
Rub it in, why don't you? I'm stuch with an R5K O2 with 128MB... Much
better than the AIX machines they used to expect us to work on, though...
Sunil
Larry Hunter
I said:
a big, fast machine with gigabytes of RAM running lisp is one of the most
productive research computing environments imaginable. [I'm running Franz
ACL on a 4 processor SGI Origin 2000 with 4GB ram, and using every bit of
it. Whoo-whee!]
To which Sunil Mishra replied:
Rub it in, why don't you? I'm stuch with an R5K O2 with 128MB... Much
better than the AIX machines they used to expect us to work on, though...
Hey, Sunil, that's exactly the setup I have at home. Cost less than $4k
(educational discounts) when I bought it two years ago, and it's generated
more than 15x that in consulting income for me since then. Held its value
better than a wintel box, too....
Those who really prefer NT can now get SGI intel/NT boxes, which look pretty
snazzy as PCs go. Anyone got lisp running on one of those yet? What do
you think?
Tim Bradshaw
> The critical mass of Windows is undeniable. Almost any
> app you write for it will find a market. The best machine
> for running Lisp would have gigabytes of RAM and would
> be expensive.
This is really wrong. Of course it is kind of trivially true for
almost any system, but Lisp systems are way off the critical path for
almost anything right now.
On my machine right now, I have a 50Mb-resident office suite, a couple
of emacsen with about 20Mb each, Netscape with about 14Mb, a fancy
bitmap manipulating program with about 8Mb. And two different Common
Lisp systems with 7 and 5 (neither of which is running a big program
right now but both have done stuff recently. My screensaver program
has half as much resident as the smaller Lisp!
And I forgot to mention OS-type stuff which is eating probably 50Mb
including the X server.
And I'm definitely not running some cutting-edge vast machine. It
happens to be a Sun because I don't want the hassle of fiddling inside
the box more than once during the life of the machine, but it's
basically equivalent the kind of PC you pay $1000 or something for
nowadays (and it didn't cost that much more than that).
Lisp is just nowhere *near* the biggest application anyone uses
nowadays.
For some interesting stuff related to this check out recent issues of
RISKS which appears in comp.risks, where someone has taken apart I
think the windows registry editor to work out how bloated it really
is.
--tim
Tim Bradshaw
> On 05 May 1999 16:46:30 +0000, Erik Naggum <er...@naggum.no>
> wrote:
> executables as email attachments.
send FASL files!