Re: <bigwig>

["Eray Ozkural \(exa\)" <erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr>]

Craig Brozefsky wrote:
> Since you mentioned Free Software web programming environments...
> 
> We've written a Free Software web programming environment in Common
> Lisp which is comparable to some of the more featureful commercial
> "application servers" like WebObjects.  We did all the development on
> Debian BTW, using Peter Van Eynde's awesome .debs for CMUCL.  It also
> comes with an SQL package comparable to Apple/NeXT's EOF and based on
> accepted standards in the Common Lisp community.  We make both
> packages available as .debs, although they are slightly out of sync
> with the CVS archive (which is also available to other developers).

This sounds really great, because some Apple developers showed me
their latest incarnation of WebObjects on the MacOSX beta last year and
I was truly impressed. Any chance that's a CLOS package?

Looks like it's already in Debian. Great work! I presume uncommonsql
and uncommonxml are coming, too.

> Debian is really a great environment for lisp thanx to the work of
> Peter and others.  It's so great in fact that we use it as the
> production environment for our resource scheduling software.  After
> spending years working with Solaris and other platforms, Debian just
> makes them all look ridiculous, like goddamn scrubs.

Sun must be destroyed. Really. :) I've seen how linux worked on an
ultra-sparc-? that ran solaris before, and the difference is amazing.
And that was Red Hat. I wonder how debian would feel like!!!

> The proprietary "web development" platforms are so bloated and
> overwrought with Javatude and egregious standards creep that the Free
> Software environments really do offer viable alternatives. Viva La
> Free Software

Java. The thing that should not be... I tried to use Java for two
projects:
  1. First time I used it was in the early versions, dates back to
  3 years ago or more. Not sure. I wrote a small 3d engine in pure
  Java. (100kb source) Result? The debugger couldn't even start.
  The graphics were so slow that it actually turned the then-cool
  hardware into essentially my old Atari-800XL

  2. Years passed. I thought "With so many forces acting upon it,
  Java might have been something good. Let me take another shot at it"
  I wrote a data-mining algorithm in it. Again pure Java. Uses
  multilevel graph clustering internally. Result? Clusters toy-sized
  datasets in many ten-minutes on a PII 300. That was this spring. I tried
  both IBM's and Sun's latest and most polished stuff. 

  My decision on Java is "thumbs down"....

Happy hacking,

-- 
Eray (exa) Ozkural
Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
e-mail: erayo@cs.bilkent.edu.tr
www: http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/~erayo