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An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

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Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#161

Post by wglb »

FredPret wrote: post #63
wglb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham used VI and clisp when he built viaweb.

It's because of his continual praise of lisp that I wanted to check it out. What I'm complaining about is that it's much harder to "check it out" than it perhaps could be. At one point many years ago, I wanted to check out this new Python thing. It was so easy, I've been hooked ever since.

> It's because of his continual praise of lisp that I wanted to check it out.

I can't argue with that. It did take me a long time to get comfortable with Lisp. But I felt it was worth the efforts.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#162

Post by ptrott2017 »

igouy wrote: post #103
cess11 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Factor. https://factorcode.org/

Not obvious to me that it provides the same experience: "The image is a map of the memory after the code was loaded. Unlike in Smalltalk, Factor code is always distributed in files rather than in the image." https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor/FAQ/Install

Factor provides support for both file and image based workflows. Factor is image-based and uses files when sharing, loading or refreshing vocabularies. however, just like lisp and Smalltalk, you can also save, share and restore system state via an image. For example you can save the whole state of Factor with the word

save-image

and you can restore that image using ./factor -i=path-to-image

This image workflow and interaction via the inspector provides a very similar workflow experience to both Smalltalk and Common Lisp.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#163

Post by Qem »

FredPret wrote: post #63
wglb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham used VI and clisp when he built viaweb.

It's because of his continual praise of lisp that I wanted to check it out. What I'm complaining about is that it's much harder to "check it out" than it perhaps could be. At one point many years ago, I wanted to check out this new Python thing. It was so easy, I've been hooked ever since.

> At one point many years ago, I wanted to check out this new Python thing. It was so easy, I've been hooked ever since.

IDLE is a underrated feature of Python. The default install includes a barebones IDE together with the REPL, making setup for beginners nearly zero effort. On the other hand, in lisp land, step 0 to learn most lisps is to learn emacs beforehand.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#164

Post by [deleted] »

FredPret wrote: post #4
fooker wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad that this ecosystem has fallen out of favor for mainstream software development. One could have designed OOP like frontends to this fairly easily, and I'm sure there are existing ones. How did Java and C++ take over?

I’ve tried multiple times to get into SBCL, but every time I run into the problem that I have to learn Emacs first. I know there are lots of other ways to work with SBCL, but they are either second-class citizens or paid.

[deleted]

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#165

Post by Qem »

FredPret wrote: post #4
fooker wrote: post #2

It's a bit sad that this ecosystem has fallen out of favor for mainstream software development. One could have designed OOP like frontends to this fairly easily, and I'm sure there are existing ones. How did Java and C++ take over?

I’ve tried multiple times to get into SBCL, but every time I run into the problem that I have to learn Emacs first. I know there are lots of other ways to work with SBCL, but they are either second-class citizens or paid.

> I’ve tried multiple times to get into SBCL, but every time I run into the problem that I have to learn Emacs first.

I have the same problem with Hylang.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#166

Post by aidenn0 »

User23 wrote: post #160
pfdietz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is often interpreted Every competitive Common Lisp implementation has compilation. SBCL defaults to not even using an interpreter for eval.

I thought SBCL was a compiler only implementation? CMUCL did have an interpreter though.

It was until someone resurrected the evaluator it inherited from CMUCL

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#168

Post by cess11 »

igouy wrote: post #103
cess11 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also Factor. https://factorcode.org/

Not obvious to me that it provides the same experience: "The image is a map of the memory after the code was loaded. Unlike in Smalltalk, Factor code is always distributed in files rather than in the image." https://concatenative.org/wiki/view/Factor/FAQ/Install

It's likely to be more obvious if you tried it out.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#169

Post by xenophonf »

7373737373 wrote: post #167

Any explanation for the name?

Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is a fork of Carnegie Mellon University Common Lisp (CMUCL).

University founders Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and Richard Mellon are best known for their work in the steel industry and banking.

Re: An Exploration of SBCL Internals (2020)

#170

Post by treadmill »

p_l wrote: post #65
linguae wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The printer driver situation was RMS’s last straw, but he was already saddened by the demise of the sharing culture of the MIT AI lab once Symbolics and Lisp Machines, Inc. were founded, and he spent a considerable amount of effort reimplementing features from Symbolics: https://www.gnu.org/gnu/rms-lisp.en.html

There's a lot more to the history. My favourite quote from some other participants was "he didn't see us at lunch not because AI Lab culture died, but because we avoided him"

Source?
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