Paolo Amoroso, in noting the new, different screenshots of Climacs, a Common Lisp implementation of Emacs, says that “not yet ready for prime time”. However, since Paolo and I both reach an audience of Lisp-interested developers, let me emphasize what the casual reader might not have gleaned from that simple statement. It is fair to say that users reporting bugs will largely find their reports dropped on the floor, simply because the developers already know that the functionality isn't there or is already broken; on the other hand, anyone wishing to get their hands even just a little bit dirty will find that there is both a lot of low-hanging fruit and large potential rewards from hacking at the code.

In the meantime, Brian Mastenbrook is at the ILC to present a paper that we wrote (with Robert Strandh) about Climacs' current status and potential. I can't quite say that I regret not being there — perhaps I regret it not being here — but I do wish the “I” in ILC were taken a bit more seriously. (There are rumours to the effect that 2006 may see improvement in this area).