51–60 of 180 posts
I just wish a good IDE existed so I don't have to use Emacs. That's what made me drop lisp in the past. I would be happy with (neo)Vim setup as well, but that was way behind Emacs and broken when I tried.
LispWorks - https://www.lispworks.com/
However, price for hobby user license at 750 USD is laughable.
Since a few folks here recommended Common Lisp to me as the language that would "tick all my boxes", I've been doing a deep dive. Right now, I'm working through SICP again with DrRacket. The first time I worked through it with MIT Scheme MANY years ago. It's shocking how much I've forgotten. What I like about this article is that it walks through the different "camps" of Lisp. Scheme is so intriguing to me because of…
I can also recommend clojure. For me it has the best parts of common lisp and the best of the java ecosystem. But its also quite different from common lisp and scheme. Different enough to find some unique ideas. Writing scripts using [0] Babashka is also really nice. [0] https://babashka.org/
Since a few folks here recommended Common Lisp to me as the language that would "tick all my boxes", I've been doing a deep dive. Right now, I'm working through SICP again with DrRacket. The first time I worked through it with MIT Scheme MANY years ago. It's shocking how much I've forgotten. What I like about this article is that it walks through the different "camps" of Lisp. Scheme is so intriguing to me because of…
I can also recommend clojure. For me it has the best parts of common lisp and the best of the java ecosystem. But its also quite different from common lisp and scheme. Different enough to find some unique ideas. Writing scripts using [0] Babashka is also really nice. [0] https://babashka.org/
Now there are of course limitations to what you can do in terms of not supporting Java reflection or the full Clojure compiler. But I've made some nifty small scripts and convenience helpers with it. And the dev experience of making these scripts is so much nicer than trying to write bash scripts. The Clojure edn syntax is super simple, and the REPL connected editor let me rapidly test parts of the code just like with full Clojure apps.
I don't have experience with other lisps, but I can vouch for Clojure being very nice. The community was welcoming and friendly to newcomers when I started learning, I hope it still is. One thing I love about the Clojure ecosystem and community is the effort taken to never break libraries. I've looked at libraries I used some ten years ago, and the API is still compatible with code I wrote back then. There is very little churn. Maybe this is because the language is largely untyped and editors only partially check "types". Having breakages in libraries you consume once every couple of months would get really tiring in Clojure land. I'd imagine the same problems would present themselves in Common Lisp and others.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can also recommend clojure. For me it has the best parts of common lisp and the best of the java ecosystem. But its also quite different from common lisp and scheme. Different enough to find some unique ideas. Writing scripts using [0] Babashka is also really nice. [0] https://babashka.org/
I particpated in a Clojure reading group for "Getting Clojure" back around 2017. Having the entire JVM ecosystem available, is absolutely a great benefit. I even fooled around with ClojureScript a bit. David Nolen is great at making the case for both.
That helped me to think about recursion, functional programming, and type driven development. After going through HTDP I was able to breeze through complex problems that were unsolvable before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I particpated in a Clojure reading group for "Getting Clojure" back around 2017. Having the entire JVM ecosystem available, is absolutely a great benefit. I even fooled around with ClojureScript a bit. David Nolen is great at making the case for both.
On a related note, there's a cross-platform Common Lisp package, "Bike" https://github.com/Lovesan/bike , that lets you use .Net assemblies from Common Lisp. I've used it a tiny bit at work (on Windows) and at home (on Linux), and ran into one issue with "out" parameters, but otherwise it works really well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I particpated in a Clojure reading group for "Getting Clojure" back around 2017. Having the entire JVM ecosystem available, is absolutely a great benefit. I even fooled around with ClojureScript a bit. David Nolen is great at making the case for both.
Now there's Jank too, the first time a Lisp dialect has reached into native world since Clasp. The way it interops Clojure with the LLVM is unprecedented.
What's that supposed to mean? Many (probably most if we only consider the non-toy ones) lisp implementations are "native" (compiling to native machine code, not interpreted).
Since this is the largest gathering of LISP users I have seen, I have a question. Why prefer lisp-1 over lisp-2 or vice-versa?
The classic example is, imagine you have a function with a local variable called “list”, common enough. Now imagine you invoke a macro inside that function which generates a call to the built-in “list” function - also common enough. In a Lisp-1 without hygiene that breaks - your local definition shadowed the built-in; in a Lisp-2 or hygienic Lisp-1 you’re in the clear.
Lisps have many fantastic ideas, but are really hard to read. Lisp code is what we had before perl guys went "hold my beer".
I know its just syntax, and it usually does not matter, untill it does. I did some clojure a long time ago, and before that some CL, and god, i cant understand my own old code. Contrast that to some language that has syntax i can read it still, years later. Go being the prime example of write once, read a decade later.