4 ms·

I ended up buying LispWorks for that reason, and after putting up the work and reading the documentation I found out I am more productive with their IDE than wi

I ended up buying LispWorks for that reason, and after putting up the work and reading the documentation I found out I am more productive with their IDE than with Slime. That being said, I am so dependent on SBCL's treatment of types that I always have a Slime session open in order to parallely develop non graphical code on both. It is truly an amazing implementation. Here’s to another 20 years and beyond!

_pmf_ 7y ago
I think a lot of people would be interested in reading more about your workflow.
- TurboHaskal 7y ago
  Nothing to write home about. Most of the time I'm developing inside of LispWorks, but because I'm so used to Emacs and I'll be using org-mode and magit anyway, having a Slime session as well to try out stuff and run tests comes at no cost. Simply compiling something with SBCL catches some stuff, and it's always good to make sure your code works in different implementations during actual development and not as an afterthought. Besides, as clunky/spartan as they are, Slime and Sly are a lot of fun so why not? Even good old Hemlock gets some use. When developing I always detach the UI code so it lives in its own package, where I don't hesitate to make use of implementation goodies such as CAPI (of course) and the mp package. The rest of the stuff aims to be portable CL and uses the de-facto compatibility libraries.
mmargerum 7y ago
$500 for hobbyist edition. Ouch!
- _ph_ 7y ago
  I think they are missing an opportunity there. The commercial prices are in line with other professional software offerings. But as a hobbyist I never could quite convice myself to buy a license. As nice as their environment is, there is SBCL. Consequently, at work I would use SBCL too and not argue for a Lispworks license. Of course, while lacking the IDE, SBCL is likely the better Lisp compiler.
  - TurboHaskal 7y ago
    Well there's more to it than just the compiler, but if you develop for the server and either SBCL or CCL are behaving like champs for your needs, there aren't many reasons to change. The IDE is really nice but it isn't a game changer. LispWorks shines when you have to ship products that customers will run themselves. As for the pricing of the Hobbyist edition, I think they are hurting their business this way in the long term. Times have changed and thanks to Quicklisp the ecosystem is better and more important than ever, but a lot of libraries go untested for LW because of such paywall. Not to mention the Personal Edition is barely usable and leaves a bad impression. But then again, these are just my two cents. I am not going to tell one of the very few commercial vendors alive today how to run their business.

_pmf_ 7y ago

I think a lot of people would be interested in reading more about your workflow.

TurboHaskal 7y ago
Nothing to write home about. Most of the time I'm developing inside of LispWorks, but because I'm so used to Emacs and I'll be using org-mode and magit anyway, having a Slime session as well to try out stuff and run tests comes at no cost. Simply compiling something with SBCL catches some stuff, and it's always good to make sure your code works in different implementations during actual development and not as an afterthought. Besides, as clunky/spartan as they are, Slime and Sly are a lot of fun so why not? Even good old Hemlock gets some use. When developing I always detach the UI code so it lives in its own package, where I don't hesitate to make use of implementation goodies such as CAPI (of course) and the mp package. The rest of the stuff aims to be portable CL and uses the de-facto compatibility libraries.

mmargerum 7y ago

$500 for hobbyist edition. Ouch!

_ph_ 7y ago
I think they are missing an opportunity there. The commercial prices are in line with other professional software offerings. But as a hobbyist I never could quite convice myself to buy a license. As nice as their environment is, there is SBCL. Consequently, at work I would use SBCL too and not argue for a Lispworks license. Of course, while lacking the IDE, SBCL is likely the better Lisp compiler.
- TurboHaskal 7y ago
  Well there's more to it than just the compiler, but if you develop for the server and either SBCL or CCL are behaving like champs for your needs, there aren't many reasons to change. The IDE is really nice but it isn't a game changer. LispWorks shines when you have to ship products that customers will run themselves. As for the pricing of the Hobbyist edition, I think they are hurting their business this way in the long term. Times have changed and thanks to Quicklisp the ecosystem is better and more important than ever, but a lot of libraries go untested for LW because of such paywall. Not to mention the Personal Edition is barely usable and leaves a bad impression. But then again, these are just my two cents. I am not going to tell one of the very few commercial vendors alive today how to run their business.