[Bese-devel] UCW vs Seaside (and Scheme)

[Waldo Rubinstein]

On Sep 3, 2005, at 12:03 PM, Marco Baringer wrote:

> Peter Scott <sketerpot at gmail.com> writes:
>
>
>>> I have to say I have spent more time learning about Smalltalk/ 
>>> Seaside
>>> than I have invested in Lisp/UCW. However, somehow it feels Lisp/UCW
>>> seem to provide a better roadmap and more stable platform.
>>>
>
> [replying to waldo] where did you get the impression that ucw is a
> more stable platform than seaside? (this is just idle curiosity on my
> part).
>
> if nothing else seaside has a much larger and more active user
> community (its also been around a lot longer).

I tend to agree with you on this one. I do see more "traffic" on the  
Seaside list and obviously the higher version numbers. But I was  
referring to the overall combination of Smalltalk/Seaside and Lisp/ 
UCW. I enjoyed learning about Smalltalk and definitely learned many  
new things about programming in general. There are some general  
philosophies in the Smalltalk world that I'm not so satisfied with. I  
don't want to turn this into a Lisp vs Smalltalk discussion. I think  
both languages have a huge amount of merits. It's just that after  
learning a bit more about Lisp, I think the development lifecycle of  
production applications is better handled in Lisp. BTW, I loved Paul  
Graham's article "Lisp in Web-Based Applications". It definitely sold  
me more to the idea.

>
>
>> UCW is still very unstable, with major parts being ripped out and
>> replaced as we speak. Common Lisp is very stable, with a wide
>> selection of good compilers, both commercial and open-source. UCW  
>> is a
>> pleasure to work with, for what it's worth---but I haven't checked  
>> out
>> Seaside.
>>
>
> just to clarify: i agree the ucw's api is unstable, and i do rip out
> and rewrite major parts whenever i feel the need, but it does work and
> is being used in production environments.

That's the feeling I got. Like I said before, I didn't get the  
impression it was stable. BTW, both videos (the UCW Hello World  
tutorial and the one about SLIME) are great. They simply just  
motivated me that much more into looking deeper at Lisp, UCW, SLIME,  
and others.

>
>
>> Marco is working on (or has added, I'm not sure which) an interpreter
>> for a CL-like language which has proper serializable continuations  
>> and
>> has removed CL's features that conflict with continuations, like
>> UNWIND-PROTECT. This promises a significant improvement in things  
>> Just
>> Working properly, at the cost of one or two orders of magnitude
>> slowdown in the interpreted code. The interpreted code isn't a
>> bottleneck, so don't worry about it.
>>
>
> the interpreter is in and does everything the old cps transformer did
> and then some. support for serializable continuations is in the works.

BTW, I couldn't find on the web site release notes or version  
changes. Is there such a thing posted?

>
>
>> I can't speak for scheme, but CL has:
>>
>> CLSQL: a good interface to a number of SQL databases. I'm  
>> particularly
>> fond of the reader syntax that prevents SQL-injection problems, among
>> other inconveniences. There's also an object-relational mapping,  
>> but I
>> haven't used it so I can't opine on it.
>>
>> fare-csv: you can import and export CSV in a straightforward way. I
>> found some of the code in this one to be a little amusing, but it
>> certainly works well enough.
>>
>
> for what it's worth arnesi also contains a trivial csv reader/writer.
>
>
>> CL-PDF and cl-typesetting: make PDF files easily, and do so with nice
>> typesetting.
>>
>
> i'd be very surpsied if plt or bigloo scheme did not offer equivalent
> libraries.

I spent a bit of time in their sites and couldn't find all of my  
needs. Maybe I didn't spend enough time. Maybe they just don't have  
that support.

>
>
>>> At this point, I'm wondering if there is anyone in this list that  
>>> can
>>> shed some light into clearing up where I should be going. I've  
>>> always
>>> been fascinated with Lisp, but never spent enough time to learn it.
>>> Now that I have some time, I'd like to know where I should be
>>> investing my time more wisely (Lisp, Smalltalk, Scheme). I don't  
>>> know
>>> if I should really rule out Scheme and may be someone could also
>>> comment on it.
>>>
>
> there's a huge difference between scheme, smalltalk and common
> lisp. if you have the time i'd suggest becoming proficent in all
> three, i don't feel like suggesting one over the other.
>
> personally i'm a big fan of smalltalk, but (obviously) i'm a far
> bigger fan of common lisp.

Well, I do have some time, but not that much time :) I would love to  
become proficient in all of them, but because I know that's not  
possible in the immediate future, I want to make the best of my  
immediate time.

I also like Smalltalk alot. I've mostly used Squeak but feel it's a  
little slow and still get the feeling that it's evolving too much. I  
would have anticipated (and to some degree this goes to Lisp as well)  
that after 30 years or so, there would be more mature and stable  
platforms.

>
> -- 
> -Marco
> Ring the bells that still can ring.
> Forget the perfect offering.
> There is a crack in everything.
> That's how the light gets in.
>     -Leonard Cohen
>

Thanks,
Waldo