plam3ns
While I can't talk in the name of LW, as a former customer I can assert that we had not a single support case which took more than 2 days (where some have been hairy). The main reason is that there is no "first level support" - you talk directly with the authors of the complier/IDE/libs. And they fundamentally know their product and over the decade or two they have seen lot of possible misinteractions of the product with the underlying (often misconfgured) OS/networking/UI/.. etc. Bugs in LW are mostly in corner cases which can be solved usually with a small patch (where it's distribution is less painfull as in most other products - being a Common Lisp - they sometims can issue a patch even for a running system..) The only time their team needed about 3 weeks (where I'm not the only customer) has been, when we requested the introduction of a new data type in the language and producing a highly optimized machine code for it (try this with MS/Apple/Oracle or any of the open source languages in terms of money/time/quiality...). This has been a request for a change, a not a but report, which affects their compiler infrastructure for at least Win32/64, OSX, Linux and FreeBSD. I got the new functionality as part of the support contract! No additional cent, even it's not a bug! If you know how multiplatform compilers look inside, you will know that what they did is impressive and has been delivered essentially for free.
> Believe it or not our problems existed (professor included, happened during assignment reviews) but as new users we decided to just finish the assignment and move on. Subconsciously we felt it was a better return of investment for our time.
I believe you. That's why I still wonder why your professor hasn't taken action on it. While you can have been young and not enough knowledgable about CL, he IS the one who knows not only CL, but also LW. So - from what you tell me I see only that you have got a bad beat by being with the wrong situation during exams and drawing conclusions about the general state of LW, which is actually quite different (at least for the most of it's users) from what you describe.
> User Experience 101: when new users of your product face problems, they don't contact support and just leave as soon as possible for an alternative.
This is for sure true for mass products for unqualified public (for example an Iphone or a car). But take any essentially complex software (Let say the JVM or a helicopter or a bigger cargo ship or in our case LW). If it delivers real value - customers and producers often work hand in hand, setup organization and procedures to deal with problems on both sides etc. to resolve the problems, because usually the net gain of a working product is for the customer is higher than a couple of hiccups or some $$$. This has been and is still a working model for most of the IT industry (at least in the bigger part of the IT industry where products/services are payed with money and responsibility is guaranteed by at least through contracts).
> Support is there for people who already use the product and/or have no alternatives (which LispWorks has many).
Of course the support is for people who use a product :) And of course if the car breaks which you drive, even if you have alternatives, usually you go to a garage to get it repaired instead of just throwing it away and byuing a new one :) And of course there are alternatives to LW, some with great communities, and in all of which from time to time you also need support, as soon you are a customer :) But you know that :)
Saying that a Ferarri or a good Swiss watch or building an oil rafinery is expensive, because one doesn't want or can't buy it, just for the sake of it, is without sense. Cost as an absolute number is often meaningless. It gets a meaning in terms of value it could or does provide. For example, where I live, a not big appartent costs about 1500 EUR per month to rent. Is that expensive? Sure - everythign above 0 is expensive. But for me the value provided that I have a roof over the head is greater then the absolute cost. Well, I have lived also in places where this price for a similar appartment is about 100 EUR. Is that cheap? No - in comparison to the local purchasing power - no. But again - the value for me has been more important. Do I like the pricing of let say Oracle? Why should I.. But I can generate more value for clients and/or me using Oracle while using it in comparison to waiting around and telling everyone, that Oracle is expensive. As far as I know even in the most broken economies of the world, software developers can provide value for customers which exceeds the 1200 EUR initial and later 300 EUR per year of maintenance. If they can't, the problem is usually not the price of LW, but unemployment or impossibility to find paying clients for all possible economic or personal reasons beyond the price of LW.
If you read earlier posts - you would have known, that if you just want to learn about LW or Common Lisp in general - there are plenty of options - LW provides a "Personal Edition" with the price of 0, or academic pricing as well as evaluation licenses. Outside of LW you have at least (in no particular order) SBCL, CLISP, ClozureCL, ABCL, ECL, which are all at least open source, some under GPL and most of them are pretty fine products too. So - as we both see - your problem is not actually in the 1200.
Concerning OM: you can experience Open Music without the need to recompile it and THEN decide if the cost of the possibility to recompile it is of value FOR YOU greater then the price of LW. Again - this is not fault of LW or the authors of OM. It's just your decision AFTER you know how worth not just using or writing plugins for OM, but also changing OM itself is valuable to you. It's your choice and you are free to take it. If you say no - no one is insulted :)
Cheers
No - just reread what I have written. There are established ways to deal with problems in standards situations. If someone breaks a leg while walking on a street while hitting a stone, he can either moan about the quality of the product (the street) and don't take further action or at least to go to a doctor (the support in your case). While undergraduates may be uninformed about the administrative ways to deal with such problems, at least their professor should have taken such action especially when he recognizes that most of the LW users don't have the problem which he and his students experience. Just whining shows only attitude, but is no solution, and this is something we for sure both know.
> A great support does not change the fact that software was faulty
Well, we all know how to crash compilers and IDEs (even Clojure :), but this is not the point. If you or your professor have called the support, with very high probability you would have experienced the removal of that faultyness. Sometimes even writing to the user group of Common Lisp (comp.lang.lisp) or the more specific of the LispWorks often gives you solutions and more knowledge.
> Because he doesn't agree with you?
In no way. Only because it is a fact.
Cheers
"Well, I was forced to use Windows+LispWorks in college and I found myself (and my classmates) shouting "stupid LipsWorks!" at it more than we should have." - this is usually (at least in the context of LispWorks very unusual for years already (me personally have used it for about a decade in the last 14 years for production software) - I don't know in which decade you tried it, but at least in the 21-st century LispWorks has been pretty stable for the majority of it's users as far as I have heard, and some of them run trading platforms for example on it. Yes, the GUI has always been a weak point of the product, but to have a workflow as you describe points to errors outside of LispWorks - probably education, probably not having called a single time the support I have praised earlier etc. But the important part is not who would cry louder - you can gather the whole class and continue to shout "stupid LispWorks" - it's without value for all.
"If GP called it stupid he might have his own reasons to do so (even if he could've said it more politely). Dismissing his opinion because of how much effort someone has put into LW is not helpful." - Well - his opinion is uninformed, uneducated and probably insulting. He seems to be pretty young and more loud than knowledgable, so it has been a chance to help.
"The man hours of work mean nothing.." - Sure - it's just again unedecuated in that specific case. "..because as a consumer I don't care how much work you've put into it, but only about the quality of the product.." - I really don't know how a bunch of undergraduates can for so long not listen to their professor or to not call support and to torture themselfes with notepad and still long after finishing that school still not reflect about their experience and the right actions to take in comparison to just moaning. "...and still have which, based on my experience, is lacking..." - Sure, the GUI is and probably will be lacking in every Common Lisp implementation incl. LispWorks'. But if you have listened to your professor at that time, you would at least today know, that this has never been his main point of teaching with Common Lisp or that LispWorks is a tool for several companies running some important software without crashes. 10 years ago as well as today.
Whatever - the discussion/argumentation evolves to a kindergarden. My point, I repeat, has been to sensibilize the GP to some need for learning before categorizing the work of others as "stupid commercial". Either I can animate you or the GP to learn more or I can't. That's all. It's your life, not mine.
Cheers
First - OM is licensed under GPL (see their website). While the word "open" in the context of GPL can be discutable depending on the view of the gp, that's not a fault of LispWorks.
Second - if not the GPL has been the confusion in the gp, then - to run AND develop for OM no one needs a commercial license of LispWorks (the runtime/compiler/lister/editor are distributed with OM). A professional tool like LispWorks is needed only to recompile OM itself, which is so or so not a hurdle for the gp until he doesn't gain enough knowledge about and experience with OM AND Common Lisp. By the time he gets there, I'm sure - he will either decide that neither OM or Lisp are his things and then again the license is irrelevant - or he will decide to pursue that path in which case the costs for LW are a bargain in comparison to the value one gets. If not OM, but Lisp seems to be something for him at the end - even then he can choose from about a dozen different implementations with different licensing terms from GPL though Open Source up to licenses for tens of tausends per CPU per year.
Third - "open" can be a bit ladden with "free", but it can mean also an "open architecture" or a "development of software open to the public" or whatever. Again - not reading what is written on the website of the OM creators doesn't do good to the gp.
Last - if you or gp mean that one has to bite in every carrot with an engraved "free" on it is serious then... :)
But I started with the idea to help the gp to look deeper before using strong language and less to continue bashing on soft reasoning.
Peace and regards
Calling the LispWorks implementation of Common Lisp "stupid", a result of decades of man hours of work of actually not only pretty intelligent, but also very knowledgeable men, who managed to produce a fine product, provided it for a real bargain and surrounded it by a stellar (take my word for it) support for their customers, is sad. Fundamentally. Not in the way of, like if your or mine team wins the 2014 WM of FIFA. Sad in the sense like if I see someone literary pissing at the musicians of the London Philharmonic Orchestra because he doesn't like the sound of violines or just doesn't like Dvořák and especially doesn't like the fact, that he needs to buy a ticket to experience them, one who seems never tried to master any instrument to, if not to understand, then at least to get a feeling about the matter (otherwise he would have already developed some respect), but still he talks about it with words like "stupid commercial".
I hope you don't see an insult in my words, but an inspiration to read more, to learn more. There are intelligent people around you, believe me. And this is rewarding. Finally a lot of them provide their output for bargain (if we talk about Lisp then like LispWorks, but you can take any area) or for nothing monetary (like the authors/maintainers of SBCL).
Regards