[mcclim-devel] Feasibility Question

[James Ashley]

Hi, all.

I've been programming for close to 30 years now, and I've been trying
to find a good excuse to really learn common lisp (as opposed to just
dabbling) for the past 3 or so.

I think I've finally come across a project that feels like the right
"fit." The basic idea is a collaborative 3-d client-side application
server with a built-in IDE that persists the state off all its
applications between all its program runs.

This is total vaporware at the moment...I'm just trying to do some
basic research and pick the right tools. I've been involved in way too
many where we started out in one environment, got a proof of concept,
then realized there were some fundamental limitations that kept us
from moving forward, so we essentially had to start over from scratch
(or wound up layering ever-more-unmaintainable pieces on top of an
unsustainable architecture).

Right now, I'm thinking off "applications" being developed on at least
4 different levels. One would be raw common lisp, that interacts
directly with the "interpreter." Another would really be creating
custom frame managers (I think...I'm just scratching CLIM's surface)
to provide eye candy effects (since I'm planning on targeting the
masses, I've learned that it's pretty much all about the eye candy).
Yet another would be something like the HTML/CSS/Javascript paradigm
to create 2-d "applications." And the last would be the actual 3-d
world where the users interact.

A combination of Open Cobalt and World Forge seemed like the "proper"
mix at first. But, the more I dug into smalltalk, the less impressed I
was. I kept thinking "If only I could write a macro to do all this..."

The more I dug into it, the more I realized just how big and ambitious
this project is. If I'm going to be dedicating 10 years (or more) to
something, and forcing my users to download some obscure runtime
anyway...why not go with a language that left my jaw on the floor and
my head spinning? I realize common lisp isn't perfect, but what is?
(Clojure's tempting. I downloaded it, spent about 20 minutes to get a
REPL, and finally gave up. It may be mature and "ready for the big
leagues" before this project is, but...common lisp's there now.
Racket's similarly tempting, but I just don't seem to fit with the
Scheme community).

The ideas behind McClim seem to feel like it's the right "fit" for the
GUI part of the project. Not all the eye-candy pieces, of course.
Just...conceptually. I've been digging my way through the old mailing
list archives (the check-in comments are a lot more educational than I
realized at first. I'm glad they got archived that way), and I see
that there's been speculation about an OpenGL backend for ages now
(and at least an experimental stab at writing one).

Conventional wisdom seems to dictate using something like one of the
GTK bindings for the UI. But it seems to me that, if I started there,
I'd just wind up re-implementing tons of CLIM to get to an abstraction
level where I could forget about that and get down to real work. It
seems to me that my time would be better spent helping get the GTKairo
working solidly.

Either way, I'll wind up duplicating the work to switch to some crazy
gadget set built entirely on some 3-d engine or other.

I see one of the fundamental programs being a traditional "form
builder" kind of drag-and-drop thing along the lines of VB. Probably
with some kind of tree view (or maybe boxes) to hide the fact that the
code's actually being written in lisp.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Like I said...I've been going through
the old mailing list archives. I've normally have wrapped that up and
at least gotten more than a passing acquaintance with actually writing
McCLIM code (at this point, I'm just digesting that ancient CLIM
"walk-through" referenced first on the home page) before de-lurking.
But I ran across someone else today who seems to be thinking on at
least vaguely parallel lines to mine, and I figured this was the best
place to check before I wasted his time with my ideas.

Thanks,
James