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A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

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Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#41

Post by msk-lywenn »

vindarel wrote: post #5

It's a great article. Since then, we have more tools and resources so we can enhance it: ## Pick and Editor The article is right that you can start with anything. Just `load` your .lisp file in the REPL. But even in Vim, Sublime Text, and Atom [and also VSCode] you can get pretty good to very good support. See https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (also Lem, a CL editor that works for other…

I didn't do much common lisp yet, but I tried alive with vscode. It was a bit clunky but looked like what I should have expected to get if I had used emacs so, pretty cool.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#43

Post by capableweb »

saghm wrote: post #27
jakebasile wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clojure is a hosted language - it runs on the CLR and in JS/Node too. That said, the JVM is wonderful and Clojure is the best way to access it.

The main reason using the JVM for clojure seems a bit weird to me as an outsider is that from what I understand, the JVM will never use tail recursion, and preferring iteration over recursions is a bit strange for a lisp, and doubly so for one that values immutability so highly.

The main reasons for Clojure to use the JVM was (IIRC) twofold: Access to a large ecosystem where basically every idea has a library available already and being immediately productive because not needing to learn a new runtime (+ previous point of libraries already being available).

With those two reasons in mind, at the time Clojure was created, it made a lot of sense to use the JVM.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#44

Post by rawoke083600 »

I've been "toying"(mashing functions + keystroke until something nice comes out the REPL) with Clojure + SBCL for a few months now.

I'm by no measure an expert. Two things I noticed what I really LOVE about Clojure versus CL.

1) The immutability by default: Yes I know you can "get there" in LISP but Clojure really has this as part of the core dna of Clojure. Immutability is surely not the silver bullet it claims to be, but dammit it has made my programs so much nicer and elegant !

2) Square-brackets [] for function parameters: As a newbie to LISP* getting used to the syntax will take some effort. But I feel that with the [] of Clojure it makes it sooo much easier...

YMMY.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#45

Post by myth_drannon »

Everytime I see this article and the comments(or other popular submissions on Lisp), I start learning Lisp(or Clojure). I start Touretzky's book or other books, do exersism.io, try to write a roguelike and others and then it fizzles out in a couple of months and I start to learn other more modern tech. I was expecting enlightment, but never received it (I tried for couple of months :) ). I think this has been going on for a decade at least.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#46

Post by joserr »

worder0 wrote: post #4

Has anyone used the “Land of Lisp” book, or Exercism.org to learn Common Lisp? Any other fun alternatives for learning lisp?

"This book should not have been published in its current form. It contains many instances of incorrect and inconsistent terminology, as well as many other errors."[1]

[1]http://metamodular.com/Books/land-of-lisp.html

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#47

Post by abrax3141 »

larsbrinkhoff wrote: post #38
abrax3141 wrote: post #28

Been programming in CL for ~45 years (well, it wasn't CL back then), and still do so nearly every day. Julia is the first language I've seen in all that time that comes even barely close to the joy of CL, but, they just had to f-up the macros by requiring @s before them. Sigh. I guess it's back to CL.

Maclisp back then, I suppose?

I've used about 10 different Lisps - by which I mean, completely different Lisps, mostly in the pre-CL days, of course. I can't even remember most of them, although MacLisp was one for sure. I mostly remember the computers they ran on, which was many, ranging from IBM 360s to Apple ][s. I even wrote two of my own (which were used by literally no one, including me :-) and tried to make a micro-programmable PDP-something-or-other into a Lisp machine (which never really worked, although it did CAR and CDR really really fast!) Once CL came out ten thousand Lisp hackers like me breathed a major sigh of relief!

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#48

Post by abrax3141 »

trenchgun wrote: post #37
abrax3141 wrote: post #28

Been programming in CL for ~45 years (well, it wasn't CL back then), and still do so nearly every day. Julia is the first language I've seen in all that time that comes even barely close to the joy of CL, but, they just had to f-up the macros by requiring @s before them. Sigh. I guess it's back to CL.

>but, they just had to f-up the macros by requiring @s before them. This is one of the better design choices with Julia IMHO

The @ ruins most of the point of macros, which is to extend the language, provide cross-compatibility, and create DSLs (I guess that's three points...<-as are these). Anyway, since it's not surface homoiconic (although you can sort of dig down to the homoiconicity), it's better than most other languages, but still isn't a true contender for being an acceptable Lisp -- very close though. Just put the parens back and get rid of the junk syntax (and please stop idiotically marking the macros!), and I'd probably never look back.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#49

Post by daniel-cussen »

myth_drannon wrote: post #45

Everytime I see this article and the comments(or other popular submissions on Lisp), I start learning Lisp(or Clojure). I start Touretzky's book or other books, do exersism.io, try to write a roguelike and others and then it fizzles out in a couple of months and I start to learn other more modern tech. I was expecting enlightment, but never received it (I tried for couple of months :) ). I think this has been going o…

Nice. Well I do the same with mainstream coding languages, since I started with Lisp. They tend to fizzle out, and I go back to Lisp. It's my "native programming language," to coin the phrase.

Re: A Road to Common Lisp (2018)

#50

Post by daniel-cussen »

worder0 wrote: post #4

Has anyone used the “Land of Lisp” book, or Exercism.org to learn Common Lisp? Any other fun alternatives for learning lisp?

I learned with Paul Graham's book, ANSI Common Lisp. Still have it somewhere. I also printed out and bound a copy of On Lisp, since it was out of print and he said to just download it.

It's better in print because then you don't need to swap between two apps on the same screen. Plus then you actually type out the code, which is a great exercise.

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