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Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

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Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#21

Post by brunjact »

SISCOG [1] uses on all their products. Actually they use Allegro CL from Franz. [2]

The main reason (for still using it) being that it all started out as an end of college project, by the two CEOs, around Artificial Intelligence proof-of-concept-general-tools (so to say) until the big breakthrough for danish railway company, NS, which was impressed with their fleet scheduling project. This adventure began in the late 80's and they were using Lisp Machines!

I suppose the reason for still using Lisp to be a mix of i. there is no technological necessity to change; ii. the codebase of existing products is too big to translate; iii. CTOs don't have enough knowledge on other technologies to evaluate the feasibility of a change; iv. many of the developers actually love Lisp :-).

Most of the support technology is also done in-house and they don't tend to use many external libraries.

1. http://siscog.eu/

2. https://franz.com/products/allegro-common-lisp/

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#22

Post by pvaldes »

limeblack wrote: post #4

I use clisp mainly with quicklisp. Lisp isn't rather unique and simple so I have used it for an occasionally algorithm that is annoying any other way. Not for the entire system typically.

Same, for small personal projects only. Drawing a quicklisp map for example:

https://github.com/pablovaldes/quickdot

You can find a picture example of the whole thing in the directory doc

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#23

Post by TurboHaskal »

aryamaan wrote: post #17

Slightly off the topic: if I have to start using Lisp now, how do I start? I tried curating things on my own but felt overwhelmed with the alternatives and resources. Will appreciate your take on this.

Best beginners book http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/

Curated library list https://awesome-cl.com

Cookbook https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

IDE+Runtime https://portacle.github.io

Printable cheatsheet http://clqr.boundp.org

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#25

Post by peatmoss »

aryamaan wrote: post #17

Slightly off the topic: if I have to start using Lisp now, how do I start? I tried curating things on my own but felt overwhelmed with the alternatives and resources. Will appreciate your take on this.

I like Practical Common Lisp if you’re dead set on Common Lisp as your lisp.

However, I’m a fan of How To Design Programs as a gentle introduction, followed by the Racket Guide (EDIT: if you're open to other lisps). Racket is a Scheme-descended lisp, and I feel has better pedagogy, community, and a more modern feel than Common Lisp.

I also like Clojure. There have been several decent books, some free, in addition to Clojure Koans and the 4clojure exercises.

EDIT: While I like Emacs, if you don’t already grok Emacs, DrRacket is a very compelling reason to start your lisp journey with Racket.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#26

Post by patrickg_zill »

aryamaan wrote: post #17

Slightly off the topic: if I have to start using Lisp now, how do I start? I tried curating things on my own but felt overwhelmed with the alternatives and resources. Will appreciate your take on this.

I am going through Touretzky's Gentle Introduction to Common Lisp and I recommend it. You can download the entire book in pdf for free, or buy an updated version of the book. I don't see much difference between the two.

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#27

Post by kingherring »

I'm using Common Lisp for a program I wrote called simple-content-host. I'm connecting Common Lisp and C++17 to create a tiny CDN! Not only that, but I stream my programming live on Twitch and youtube, check it out: https://youtu.be/hWmrSyWZS5A https://www.twitch.tv/kingherring

P.S. here's the code https://github.com/kennymalac/simple-content-host/tree/maste... ;)

Re: Ask HN: Who is using Common Lisp?

#30

Post by _19qg »

brunjact wrote: post #21

SISCOG [1] uses on all their products. Actually they use Allegro CL from Franz. [2] The main reason (for still using it) being that it all started out as an end of college project, by the two CEOs, around Artificial Intelligence proof-of-concept-general-tools (so to say) until the big breakthrough for danish railway company, NS, which was impressed with their fleet scheduling project. This adventure began in the late…

Planning and Scheduling is a domain where Lisp has historically seen a lot of applications. For example the planner for the use of the Hubble Space Telescope (and many other telescopes in space and on earth) was originally developed on TI Lisp Machines and later ported to Common Lisp on other platforms. Generally there were a bunch of Lisp-based planners for space operations (like payload planning for Space Shuttles or planner for mars operations). There were a bunch of Lisp-based planner application in military - with the most famous being the DART system - which was used for planning the logistics for the first gulf war and saved more money that the US had ever invested in AI research up to that point in the past 30 years. With field-deployed Common Lisp applications in the middle-east, talking to remote servers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Analysis_and_Replannin...
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