Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log

Paolo Amoroso's weblog. Main interests: Lisp, astronomy (Moon), space exploration (Apollo and early manned programs)

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McCLIM listener: from cool demo to useful tool

Sunday, September 5, 2004

I don't know whether the CLIM listener that comes with McCLIM was just intended as a cool demo, or as a full-blown application. But the more I use it, the more I find it a valuable development tool.

I most often use its introspection commands, especially those for drawing class hierarchy graphs, and listing class slots or generic functions/methods. This is helpful for exploring and understanding both my own code, and other complex systems I have not written myself, such as CLIM itself. I also use the listener as a quick testbed for playing with some CLIM features or test new ideas.

Some time ago I showed the listener to a friend of mine who is not a programmer. He described it as combining in a single workflow the flexibility of a text-mode command shell, with the ease of direct manipulation of graphical interfaces.