Lispworks 4.3

Hi,

I received LWW 4.3 a couple of days ago. I just want to let everybody
know that I'm very happy with it.

I'm especially impressed with the new stepper tool. A month ago, I
convinced a client to switch from C++ to Lisp. One of the first
things he asked after we finally started doing real work with
Lispworks was: "So where's this handy stepping tool that we use
so often with Visual C++?" I explained to him that TRACE is often
more convenient than blindly stepping through code, and that you
could always drop into the debugger by inserting a BREAK in some
tactical places. He accepted that, but still wasn't totally convinced.
It's great that I can now show him that the one thing he was still
missing from his C++ period is now available in Lispworks as well.

I also appreciate some of the other new features, like the checks
for invalid initargs to MAKE-INSTANCE (I've been bitten by that more
than once), bivalent streams (a lot more convenient for Web programming),
and the improved documentation.

I'd like to thank Xanalys for doing such a great job. Without Lispworks,
my programming career would have been a lot more boring than it is now.

So what am I still missing?

Well, CAPI is pretty good, but it could be better. I think that CLIM
has a couple of great ideas that I would like to see in CAPI. Stuff
like sheets, widgets and layouts already have CAPI equivalents (and
are probably better implemented and better documented in CAPI). But
I would be very interested in CAPI equivalents of CLIM's regions and
transformations (these could probably be added to CAPI withouth many
problems, except for a few symbol conflicts), extended-output-streams
(could probably be written on top of CAPI's pinboard layouts?) and the
presentation-type system.

And documentation of course. It's pretty good already and getting better
all the time, but it can still be improved. The manuals, the IDE, the
Lispworks Knowledge Base and this mailing list are great resources, but
I could still use a lot more cross-references, examples, caveats, fine
print, implementation details, etc.

Regards,

Arthur Lemmens