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Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

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Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#51

Post by metagame »

dtagames wrote: post #14
catchclose8919 wrote: post #7

...god, my eyes ...why is everything CL plagued by such horrible design choices (hyperspec, Lisp-IDEs... all!) - why such ugly colors, ugly typography, bad contrasts, ugly logos, ugly diagrams, ugly supporting graphics?! I know that even the language itself is kind of the opposite of "beautiful", but the way all docs, blogs, websites etc. look ...seriously, is this intended to scare away any aesthetically sensitive p…

So true! Also, there are no decent UI frameworks for Lisp, so it's impossible to build a full stack app that looks good in a modern browser without adding a TS or JS web component layer. And... There's no modern IDE for Lisp. I think this aspect of ignoring UIs and aesthetics has seriously held back CL.

That's not true at all, and I'm tempted to write something to prove you wrong.

My aesthetic choices were intentional, and almost nothing in your comment is right.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#53

Post by metagame »

gumby wrote: post #45
miloignis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, but all control flow is structured and the argument/return address stack is out of your control. You have blocks, loops, and if/else statements. The behavior of a branch instruction differs based on context - in a block, it jumps out of the block, in a loop it jumps to the beginning of the loop. If you really wanted full tail-call behavior, you would either have to compile every function into the same mega-…

Thanks, that is pretty dreadful.

The spec people have been very rude to the Lisp people every time something has been brought up. I'm not going to look up everything that's been written, but here's an example:

https://sourceforge.net/p/sbcl/mailman/message/34821303/

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#54

Post by metagame »

ngcc_hk wrote: post #22
FraaJad wrote: post #19

So much complaint about color schemes. Hitting the Reader View formatted the page beautifully. I'm thankful it is a simple HTML page that could be easily formatted using browser-built-in tools.

Is there something like a box that you can key in something and it works. Reader view give you text. Also that box? I lost … perhaps I expect a REPL or … anyway not good to sell CL-webassembly I think.

As it says in the article, stdout is wired to the browser console. So you open your browser console to see it.

It's not meant to be sold, it's just a little toy.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#55

Post by stareatgoats »

metagame wrote: post #49
stareatgoats wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think aesthetics is sometimes equated to "superficiality", "commerciality" even "girlishness" and the surface impression tends to be the polar opposite for niches that really want to distance themselves from anything such. Which is not commendable but there you go.

I don't think you hit the mark at all, as the person who wrote the page. Nothing you note is a bad thing; they're all positives. Superficiality is my specialty. Your comment kind of shows some biases you might want to work on.

I hardly think I'm wrong just because you don't (think you) fit the bill. I may still be wrong, but it would take more than one single indignant denial to prove.

But I grant that my comment was flippant and OT, potentially ad hominem denigrating even if unintended. I'll try better next time. You on the other hand might try harder to make websites that are readable to ordinary people. Or not.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#56

Post by metagame »

stareatgoats wrote: post #55
metagame wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you hit the mark at all, as the person who wrote the page. Nothing you note is a bad thing; they're all positives. Superficiality is my specialty. Your comment kind of shows some biases you might want to work on.

I hardly think I'm wrong just because you don't (think you) fit the bill. I may still be wrong, but it would take more than one single indignant denial to prove. But I grant that my comment was flippant and OT, potentially ad hominem denigrating even if unintended. I'll try better next time. You on the other hand might try harder to make websites that are readable to ordinary people. Or not.

I think it's fine to accuse people of things, even though I did feel a little sad about it. I don't think the problem is that you broke rules of a web forum, or that you attacked me. I wasn't complaining that you were flippant and off-topic, I was complaining that you think silly web designs are a masculine trait, which is incredibly sexist, as well-intentioned as the sentiment is. Geocities was almost gender-balanced, which included a lot of people of all different kinds of backgrounds making strange-looking web pages. Neocities has more web pages by women than nearly anywhere else on the Internet, and many of those designs aren't to corporate sensibilities, either.

My post is WCAG AA-compliant, except for the very specific occurrence of meaningless social links, and those meaningless social links render well in a browser's 'Reader View'. My site contains no ECMAScript aside from what was necessary to get the toy working. I care deeply about making things accessible; it's important to me.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#57

Post by metagame »

gumby wrote: post #6

Great work! You write, > …wasm has a few poor decisions in its design that make it less-than-conducive to being a target for Common Lisp… Could you say a bit more about those design decisions?

Thanks for the only compliment in the thread! I appreciate it, especially given I've been such a fan of your writing and life for such a long time.

I think that the people who responded to you covered much of it, but you can find more by doing a web search for it. I'd find you links myself, but it's early in the morning and I'm a little tired.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#58

Post by stareatgoats »

metagame wrote: post #56
stareatgoats wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hardly think I'm wrong just because you don't (think you) fit the bill. I may still be wrong, but it would take more than one single indignant denial to prove. But I grant that my comment was flippant and OT, potentially ad hominem denigrating even if unintended. I'll try better next time. You on the other hand might try harder to make websites that are readable to ordinary people. Or not.

I think it's fine to accuse people of things, even though I did feel a little sad about it. I don't think the problem is that you broke rules of a web forum, or that you attacked me. I wasn't complaining that you were flippant and off-topic, I was complaining that you think silly web designs are a masculine trait, which is incredibly sexist, as well-intentioned as the sentiment is. Geocities was almost gender-balance…

> you think silly web designs are a masculine trait

So, this seems to be a simple misunderstanding then. Because that's not what I mean (nor wrote). Anyhow, although we can probably continue to debate the finer points of this, I propose we don't. Have a good evening.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#59

Post by metagame »

aidenn0 wrote: post #42

This probably doesn't count as "natively" but I've run ABCL[1] under Doppio[2]. Startup times are under a minute in Chromium based browsers and under an hour in Firefox. I've run into zero stability issues, but its no speed demon. [edit] Just tried again today and Firefox gets to a REPL in about 3.5 minutes, while chromium is still right about 1 minute. 1: https://abcl.org/ 2: https://plasma-umass.org/doppio-demo/

Thank you for making it!

Unfortunately, a JVM on wasm would be quite difficult for the same reason that Lisp over wasm is quite difficult (I had actually looked for wasm JVMs before trying anything). I had no idea there was a JS JVM implementation! That's very cool.

Re: Show HN: Common Lisp running natively over WebAssembly for the first time

#60

Post by metagame »

Existenceblinks wrote: post #5

I hope someone would create a tutorial which is using a toy programming language to compile to webassembly from scratch. Using existing language is too opaque to understand anything.

That sounds like a good idea. Have you considered writing it?
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