Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
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From: oneel@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (O'Neel bruce edwin 301-286-1511)
Subject: Re: Golden Common Lisp (quick review)
Message-ID: <Cz9pB7.F6y@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: Johns Hopkins Continuing Professional Programs
References: <39rg9e$26r@inewssc.intel.com> <3a168k$46u@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: Mon, 14 Nov 1994 17:16:18 GMT
Lines: 74

mdlrosa@uclink3.berkeley.edu (mdlrosa) writes:

>Winston and Horn's LISP, 3rd edition has an order form in the back of
>their book. The number to get more info is (617) 621-3300 and the
>address is
>      Golden Hill Computers
>      26 Landsdowne Street
>      Cambridge, MA 02139 
>They advertise the Golden Common Lisp, student adition for $80. If you
>do get it please send me a review.

Hi,
  I got Golden Common Lisp for my class work at Johns Hopkins APL.  Here's
a quick review.

First some background.  I'm not a lisp expert.  My lisp experience is the 
two 700 level CS classes I've taken.  I'm also not a lisp history expert.
I'm running this on a 486 running OS/2 2.1  My comparision platforms are 
SunOS with harlequin, OS/2 with clisp, and Solaris 2.3 with GCL (nee akcl).

In general it's nice.  What it does it does well.  In two cases (once last 
semester and once this semester) I've had to go to other lisps to do my 
project because Glisp (Golden Common Lisp) didn't have some feature.  Last 
semester I needed sort and couldn't figure out an easy way to implement
it myself.  This semester I needed CLOS.  It seems to lack a fair bit of
what's in the Steele Common Lisp 2ed book (you know, the big thick gray one)
but most of what I've needed that Glisp doesn't have is easy for me to hack
together an implimentation for my school level projects.

What you get are three different programs.  Once is a just lisp without 
an editor.  The second is lisp with a version of emacs built in.  This gives 
you less memory to work with vs the first. The last program is called 
the San Marco Explorer, think a nice tutorial / online reference manual.  
Both the emacs version and the san marco explorere take a while to load up 
under os/2.  The emacs version seems nice enough though it does insist on 
putting a ^Z at the end of each file.

Running under OS/2 is nice in this case because, since these are dos programs, 
you only get 640k.  But OS/2 can make dos sessions which have 730k or so
of memory.  As a result I've not had a class problem which couldn't be solved
by only running the emacs version.  I frequently find that early on, after
running all the way through the San-Marco explorer that I kept it up in 
another window as an on-line reference manual.

It doesn't do command line editing (a big minus) and it seems a little 
simple minded about where it want's to be installed vs where your files are.  
If you want to have you files on another disk/directory you'll like some sort
of paste feature, unless you like to always type a full path.  I have a 
feeling that it was origionally written in the early to mid 80's, and it 
feels about from that era of PC software.  One hint is that you can use /
as the path separater on a file name, which prevents you from having to 
type \\ for each \ you want.

The reference manual is a plastic spiral bound book about 4x6 or so which
I don't particularly like.  I found that I didnt' really use it beyond 
figuring out how too use the editor and the debugging facilities.  There
is a section on differences from "Common Lisp" which I didn't find very
useful.  Instead I just try the function and see if it finds it :-)  It's 
faster, though it means you might have to hunt around a bit for a function
which might work.

In general it's been useful, and it "feels" nice when I use it.  I find that
even if I start a project on another lisp that I tend too move back to Glisp
as it gets closer to the deadline and later at night, though this may be
because I'm more comfortable with it by now.

Would I buy it again?  Probably.  It's good if you need a limited lisp
for a class.  They sell a more "professional" version so this doesn't seem
suited for doing something bigger/more serious.

I'm happy to answer questions about this...

bruce

