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TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

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21–30 of 43 posts

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#21
For maximum effect, read the following in Tim’s distinctive voice:

“Is this a joke?

If you mean the 6,000 lines of working code, then no, I poured hundreds upon hundreds of very serious hours into that. But if you're referring to the fact it's woefully underdocumented, adds considerable overhead to an already slow host platform, and ultimately unlikely to gain any traction, then yeah, probably.”

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#23

Something similar: Fennel ( https://fennel-lang.org/ ) is a lisp that compiles into Lua, which neovim can use as plugins, so you can write neovim plugins in a lisp. Aniseed ( https://github.com/Olical/aniseed ) makes this really easy. Aniseed is also used by Conjure (Interactive development environment for neovim, used for evaluating Fennel code inside of neovim), which is also made by the same author. Really great p…

I use Aniseed, but it's worth noting that it's something like a "framework" on top of Fennel and Neovim. So I also want to shout out Hotpot, which is more of a simple plugin that allows you to put plain Fennel files in your runtime path, without any additional "framework" to learn.

That said, I think the framework that Aniseed introduces is really nice, and I think would be useful for writing general purpose programs outside of Neovim.

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#24

There are things I'll never understand. Why would anybody do this? Why Clojure and not Emacs Lisp?

Emacs lisp is a terrible lisp dialect. If it wasn't for Emacs' popularity it would have died decades ago. This is just one example in a long line of examples where nobody willingly implements Emacs lisp. Even in Emacs there is pressure to move towards Common Lisp.

Emacs lisp has, as far as I can tell, no advantages. It isn't especially good at text editing. It introduces differences from more popular lisp dialects. Anything it offers could be a library in some other lisp.

Clojure on the other hand, has a couple of nice syntax innovations and smooth default data structures.

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#25

Something similar: Fennel ( https://fennel-lang.org/ ) is a lisp that compiles into Lua, which neovim can use as plugins, so you can write neovim plugins in a lisp. Aniseed ( https://github.com/Olical/aniseed ) makes this really easy. Aniseed is also used by Conjure (Interactive development environment for neovim, used for evaluating Fennel code inside of neovim), which is also made by the same author. Really great p…

I'll second Conjure. I use it for (Gerbil) Scheme, and it makes it so much better. I really wish there was better support for non-Emacs editors in the Lisp ecosystem. Or really just a stronger Lisp ecosystem...

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#26
post #8

Any sufficiently complicated Vim configuration contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Emacs.

> slow

There's quite a good chance that even the most complicated Neovim setup is faster than Emacs. Emacs lisp is notoriously slow, while Neovim uses LuaJIT, which is _very_ fast.

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#28
post #8

Any sufficiently complicated Vim configuration contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Emacs.

> slow There's quite a good chance that even the most complicated Neovim setup is faster than Emacs. Emacs lisp is notoriously slow, while Neovim uses LuaJIT, which is _very_ fast.

Emacs Lisp had native-comp now.

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#29
post #8

Any sufficiently complicated Vim configuration contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Emacs.

> slow There's quite a good chance that even the most complicated Neovim setup is faster than Emacs. Emacs lisp is notoriously slow, while Neovim uses LuaJIT, which is _very_ fast.

How do Neovim and Emacs startup times compare when using Emacs 28’s native compilation of elisp?

Obviously hard to compare because they don’t run the same packages but would still be interesting to see ballpark figures of setups with roughly equivalent functionality.

Re: TimL: Clojure-like Lisp dialect that runs on and compiles down to Vimscript

#30

There are things I'll never understand. Why would anybody do this? Why Clojure and not Emacs Lisp?

Some people like Clojure syntax rather than S-expressions. Personally I don't get it, having arbitrary lists that require square instead of round brackets, arbitrary lists where pairs which belong together aren't grouped, and arbitrary lists where commas are interpreted as optional whitespace gives me a headache; but to each his own.
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