Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.lisp Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!pipex!dircon!rheged!simon From: simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) Subject: Re: Comparison: Beta - Lisp In-Reply-To: monnier@di.epfl.ch's message of 16 Sep 1994 14:15:25 GMT Message-ID: Organization: none. Disorganization: total. References: <34n2qe$d74@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de> <34pfea$6ee@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <354q47$60i@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <35c99t$lc6@info.epfl.ch> Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 18:36:37 GMT Lines: 33 Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.lang.beta:89 comp.lang.lisp:13363 In article <35c99t$lc6@info.epfl.ch> monnier@di.epfl.ch (Stefan Monnier) writes: In article , Matthew McDonald wrote: > Unless you have competitive ports to x86, Sparc, Alpha, DEC & SG Mips, > PA-RISC, and RS6k, few people are going to use a language. Not many > people are going to bother explaining that performance matters to > them, they're just going to ignore you when you try to tell them > otherwise. So true ! The best example is probably Visual Basic, right ? Out there in the real world, there are n (where n > 20, probably) people sitting in front of a Windows box for every one person sitting in front of a real computer. So if you write a program in Visual BASIC, you'll be able to sell it. You won't be able to maintain it, of course, but that's the customer's problem. If you write a program in a real language for a real computer, *unless you can port it to Windows (or windows NT, or Windows 95, or whatever other dreck Bill Gates decides to unload on the uneducated next)* you are not going to sell it. I know. I set up a company in 1988 to develop knowledge engineering tools. I said to myself 'the PC isn't powerful enough to do what I want to do, so I'll develop tools for real computers'. There were other mistakes I made, but I think it was that one that cost me the company... -- .::;====r==\ simon@rheged.dircon.co.uk (Simon Brooke) / /____||___\____ //==\- ||- | /__\( MS Windows IS an operating environment. //____\___||___|_// \|: C++ IS an object oriented programming language. \__/ ~~~~~~~~~~ \__/ Citroen 2cv6 IS a four door family saloon.