[CM] Problems with Clisp

[Bill Schottstaedt]

> What are your plans for the future of CLM? 

Gah!  I try not to look ahead at all.  I no longer enjoy working on the
Common Lisp version -- the various FFI's are horrible, and debugging
is impossible.  Whenever I'm goofing around with it, I use Snd and
Guile/Scheme, even for with-sound stuff (it's only a factor of 2 or pi
or something-like-that slower than the compiled CL version, and 
I don't think fast anymore anyway).  I'll certainly keep the CL version
going even if Fernando and Chris decide to use something else
for the introductory classes here.  Rick suggested making the current
CL-CLM a pure lisp program, but that slows it down by a factor of
30 to 50; adding all the type declarations (much worse in CL than
in C because every damned expression has to be wrapped in "the")
makes the code unreadable, so why use Lisp at all at that point?
This sounds more negative than I mean for it to -- no big changes
are in the works, as far as I can plan ahead.

If it had worked out as I originally hoped it would, composers would
be developing complicated instruments using new synthesis methods, 
but the energy now seems to be back in what I'd call music concrete! 
Maybe it's a big circle...