Lisp Propulsion Laboratory log

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

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Why the CL Directory also lists old and non-working software

Tuesday, February 7, 2006

From the #lisp IRC channel logs:

03:41:26 <Xof> why are the cl-directory maintainers including information about projects which have never run and haven't seen updates for 23 months?
03:41:53 <pimaniac> to feel industrious, probably

It's not for feeling industrious. Submitting such entries actually takes some more time than those for recent software, because it is often necessary to dig a little deeper to find key information.

I think that including such items is valuable for a number of reasons:

• I find the study of code, even old or partially working code, insightful and a source of new ideas (I learned a lot on CLIM from code I was unable to run)
• a lot of that code could be run or revived with limited effort, and knowing it exists in the first place is a first step
• many old but useful applications may be little known (few users look beyond the first results of web search queries)
• writing new code may cost more than adapting existing one, and labor is scarce among Lispers
• running old code with little or no modification shows one of the benefits of a dead^H^H^H^Hstable language such as Common Lisp.