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Common Lisp

lisp-lang.org

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Re: Common Lisp

#11
I feel inspired to start with Lisp after being disappointed with the "open" source scene of 2021. I'd rather pay LispWorks a yearly fee and be left alone than dealing with unbalanced people in the Python space. The free Lisp implementations also look somewhat isolated from the ideological wars.

However, a C interface is required. Is this one the recommended solution? Is it really portable?

https://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/

What is the speed compared to a Python C extension? Are implementation-specific C interfaces faster (I guess they are)?

Sorry for so many questions, but these can usually only be answered by people who have actually used the interface.

Re: Common Lisp

#12
post #11

I feel inspired to start with Lisp after being disappointed with the "open" source scene of 2021. I'd rather pay LispWorks a yearly fee and be left alone than dealing with unbalanced people in the Python space. The free Lisp implementations also look somewhat isolated from the ideological wars. However, a C interface is required. Is this one the recommended solution? Is it really portable? https://common-lisp.net/pro…

Yes, CFFI is the defacto standard, and has support for practically all implementations in use today. Nobody (but CFFI) uses the implementation-specific interfaces.

Re: Common Lisp

#13
post #2

That's my personal opinion, but I think that programming language pages should have more information density. I also think that using your average "startup template" for Common Lisp is a bit weird. A good example of what I like might be the OCaml homepage https://lisp-lang.org/ , the Go homepage https://golang.org/ . The Haskell homepage has a REPL with a tutorial, which encourages you to play around with the languag…

I agree that a language homepage should be information dense, and give the new user a clear overview without having to scroll. I think the Common Lisp homepage is an improvement over what I remember from years ago, and while it’s visually appealing it’s not as immediately useful as I’d like.

Besides the examples Zababa offered, I’d say the home pages for Ruby, Julia, and Python are also good:

https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/

https://julialang.org/

https://www.python.org/

Re: Common Lisp

#14
post #11

I feel inspired to start with Lisp after being disappointed with the "open" source scene of 2021. I'd rather pay LispWorks a yearly fee and be left alone than dealing with unbalanced people in the Python space. The free Lisp implementations also look somewhat isolated from the ideological wars. However, a C interface is required. Is this one the recommended solution? Is it really portable? https://common-lisp.net/pro…

I would give the Emacs/Slime/SBCL combo a try, it's definitely an acquired taste but pretty cool and more Lispy than anything else you will find.

Re: Common Lisp

#15
post #11

I feel inspired to start with Lisp after being disappointed with the "open" source scene of 2021. I'd rather pay LispWorks a yearly fee and be left alone than dealing with unbalanced people in the Python space. The free Lisp implementations also look somewhat isolated from the ideological wars. However, a C interface is required. Is this one the recommended solution? Is it really portable? https://common-lisp.net/pro…

Comparing python's C extensions to CFFI is non-trivial because they work very differently. With Python, you implement the Python API in C, but with CFFI you implement the C API in lisp.

Re: CFFI vs. built-in API

The main difference is what features you have. For example, if you need errno, you will need to do something implementation specific (I'm currently working on a wrapper for that functionality though).

Another example: ECL let's you inline C code in the middle of a lisp program. Most other implementations don't.

As far as performance goes, the actual overhead of calling C is minimal, but if you need to copy large amounts of data, that can kill performance.

There is another library called static-vectors that let's you allocate buffers that can be used natively in both lisp and C, on the implementations that allow doing so.

Re: Common Lisp

#16
Compare SxQL to Ecto.Query, the main query DSL for Elixir:

  query = from u in "users",
          where: u.age > 18,
          select: u.name

Re: Common Lisp

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When reading "Lisp-2", Most lisp programmers will probably think of the lisp dialects with 2 namespaces, one for value binding, one for function binding. See https://andersmurphy.com/2019/03/08/lisp-1-vs-lisp-2.html Lisp-2 are still alive; emacs lisp is a lisp-2. If you extrapolate hard enough, both Erlang and Elixir are lisp-2.

Common Lisp is another example of a Lisp with 2 namespaces.

Common Lisp has more than two namespaces.

Re: Common Lisp

#19

Why do we see programming language webpages and Wikipedia pages submission from time to time?

Because thats what Hacker News is:

A site which people ping with interesting and noteworthy things they stumble about and then other people decide if they think it's actually noteworthy until it's either on the front page or dropped out.

Wikipedia and other web pages can be quite noteworthy.

Through sure once everyone has seen it it's no longer note worthy.

That's why some really noteworthy things pop up on HN again and again with gaps of a few month/a year between: People think they are noteworthy, push them then "everyone" knows them so they are no longer noteworthy but then people forget and wups, it's up on the front page again ;=)

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