Re: LISP and Object Oriented Databases

Ken Tilton <kentilton@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
I notice no one has yet explained how getting a Lisp running on
Windows is "even harder".

I could explain, or at least give you my theory:

First, "being harder" is relative, to the population.

If you take 100 random linux users and 100 random windows users,
then the linux group will find it easier to fetch and install a free
lisp implementation than the windows group.

Just because amongst the linux group, you'll have much more
programmers, hackers and otherwise people used to download, compile
and install free software, while in the windows group you'll have much
more plain users who don't know how a computer works.


Then, there's the fact that linux is a free software system: there are
sources everywhere, the compilers are (almost) always installed
automatically by the distributions, so even a non-programmer can be
directed to open a terminal window (he KNOWS what it is!, the icon is
there in KDE, GNOME or whatever), and type:

wget http://...
tar jxf ...
cd ...
./configure && make && make install
...

and that's it.




On the other hand, windows is a closed system: people don't know what
a source is, they don't know what a terminal is, they can hardly find
the so called "MS-DOS" window, (I've even heard it disappeared from
the Start menu in the latest versions of MS-Windows), and even if you
find it, what can you do from a MS-DOS prompt on MS-Windows?
Is there a wget?
Is there a tar or unzip?
Is there a compiler?

Ok, so first you'll have to download the source tarball from Internet
Explorer. You'll have the icon right there in the window, but what
directory is that?

Then you'll have to download an utility to untar or unzip it. That'll
be a binary, otherwise, you go back to the start case. Check it has
no virus/worm.

Then you'll have to download a compiler. Happilly, I hear Microsoft
distributes his MSVC for free.

Then you'll be able to unarchive the sources, and to compile it.




Actually, *I* wouldn't bother. I'd point at cygwin, download
http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe execute it, install a sizeable set of
tools, then open the cygwin icon, and you're back to the linux case.


But then, people would complain that the compiled programs don't have
the MS-Windows GUI and don't integrate well with MS-Windows, blah blah
blah.

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/

ATTENTION: Despite any other listing of product contents found
herein, the consumer is advised that, in actuality, this product
consists of 99.9999999999% empty space.
.

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