From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 34369 invoked by alias); 5 Apr 2015 20:03:03 -0000 Mailing-List: contact kawa-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: kawa-owner@sourceware.org Received: (qmail 34304 invoked by uid 89); 5 Apr 2015 20:03:01 -0000 Authentication-Results: sourceware.org; auth=none X-Virus-Found: No X-Spam-SWARE-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham version=3.3.2 X-HELO: st11p02mm-asmtp001.mac.com Received: from st11p02mm-asmtpout001.mac.com (HELO st11p02mm-asmtp001.mac.com) (17.172.220.236) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.93/v0.84-503-g423c35a) with (AES128-GCM-SHA256 encrypted) ESMTPS; Sun, 05 Apr 2015 20:03:00 +0000 Received: from [192.168.1.75] (99-3-56-155.lightspeed.fyvlar.sbcglobal.net [99.3.56.155]) by st11p02mm-asmtp001.mac.com (Oracle Communications Messaging Server 7.0.5.35.0 64bit (built Dec 4 2014)) with ESMTPSA id <0NMC00KBVNOPG010@st11p02mm-asmtp001.mac.com> for kawa@sourceware.org; Sun, 05 Apr 2015 20:02:50 +0000 (GMT) Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 8.2 \(2070.6\)) Subject: Re: kawa paid support From: mikel evins In-reply-to: <5520DB6D.6060208@bothner.com> Date: Sun, 05 Apr 2015 20:03:00 -0000 Cc: mikel evins , Alcides Flores Pineda , Kawa Mailing List Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable Message-id: <20755B3D-7B83-4772-A18C-E62901015DAD@me.com> References: <5519D688.7080704@bothner.com> <5520C199.9010705@gmail.com> <5520DB6D.6060208@bothner.com> To: Per Bothner X-Proofpoint-Virus-Version: vendor=fsecure engine=2.50.10432:5.13.68,1.0.33,0.0.0000 definitions=2015-04-05_03:2015-04-03,2015-04-05,1970-01-01 signatures=0 X-Proofpoint-Spam-Details: rule=notspam policy=default score=0 spamscore=0 suspectscore=0 phishscore=0 adultscore=0 bulkscore=0 classifier=spam adjust=0 reason=mlx scancount=1 engine=7.0.1-1412110000 definitions=main-1504050193 X-IsSubscribed: yes X-SW-Source: 2015-q2/txt/msg00011.txt.bz2 > On Apr 5, 2015, at 1:51 AM, Per Bothner wrote: >=20 > It would be nice if Kawa wasn't a mostly-one-man project. > Of course other people contribute in various ways, and that is > very much appreciated, but 90% of the source code and documentation is mi= ne. > Much of that is my own fault - I have some control-freak tendencies, and > I'm not very good at publicity. But I think we're getting better: > Multiple people have contributed code, documentation, and tests; multiple > people are writing about Kawa, and using Kawa in interesting ways, You've mentioned the two great weaknesses with Kawa right now: lack of supp= ort for redefinitions, and lack of tooling support. I guess the first one i= s pretty much up to you, but other folks who want to support Kawa could hel= p with tooling. Speaking as someone who is using Kawa on a large project, I agree that thes= e are the most important weaknesses. Lack of redefinition support kind of k= ills the Lispiness of working with Kawa. Because any given reload or eval c= an cause the JVM to become confused, it's basically impossible to have the = kind of ongoing interactive conversation with code that is the hallmark of = Lisp development. I learned long ago to simply kill the Kawa repl and resta= rt it every time I make a significant edit. That works fine, and Kawa's sta= rtup is so fast that the time it takes to restart is no issue. What is an i= ssue is that every restart throws away my working context, making it imposs= ible to carry on the kind of conversation with my code that is normal for m= e. It means that working with Kawa is less like Lisp programming and more l= ike a particularly fast version of the batch-oriented development cycle of = working with C or Java. It's still faster and better than actually using C = or Java, but it's not like using Lisp. There are some tools out there to support Kawa, but a lot of them are prett= y old and unmaintained. swank-kawa does still seem to be maintained, but it= 's been quite a while since I've been able to make it work. If anyone has i= t working, I'd be grateful to learn what you did. Without it, debugging Kaw= a code is pretty much down to reading Java stack traces and inserting print= statements. But that's an area where we, the users of Kawa should be able to help. It's= pretty much up to Per to address the redefinition issue when he reasonably= can, but Kawa users can help each other with tools. Tell me how to get swa= nk-kawa to work, for example, and that will benefit everyone else who wants= to use it. Or make a Netbeans addon to support Kawa--something I've consid= ered doing, even though I'm not particularly a fan of Netbeans. Or even do = what the Clojure community did and make a new and distinct Emacs mode to su= pport interactive Kawa development (hmmm...).