Elnode, the EmacsLisp webserver, nears release • Hacker News Board

Re: Elnode, the EmacsLisp webserver, nears release

#31

Post by mhd » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 3:41 PM UTC

nic-ferrier wrote: post #27

mhd wrote: post #23

Given the optional lexical scoping of Emacs 24 (which elnode seems to use), I wonder what would be required to port something like this to a full-fledged CL system. Given some emulation of Emacs underpinnings, you could develop completely within Emacs and use that for smaller/local applications, but if you ever require more power, move it to e.g. SBCL and deploy...

Let's see how we get on with just emacs? Elnode can communicate (asynchronously) with lots of other Elnode nodes... the Elnode RLE module ( https://github.com/nicferrier/elnode/blob/master/elnode-rle.... ) provides code to spin up those nodes and offload processing to them. I think you could scale with just Emacs.

Well, I think before I'd expand to a big multi-core cluster, I'd look into my options ;)

Re: Elnode, the EmacsLisp webserver, nears release

#32

Post by opminion » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 6:02 PM UTC

nic-ferrier wrote: post #5

opminion wrote: post #2

Sounds fun. The problem with elisp, though, is that it's (I am told) not a real Lisp. The info tutorial shipped with Emacs doesn't make me suspect otherwise. Perhaps a few neat elnode examples might help.

There weren't enough in the article? It is a real lisp. I think the problem you're experiencing is that EmacsLisp has a long history. So some things that have been said were said a loooong time ago and are no longer relevant. Take a look at the other articles I have on my blog... it's clear EmacsLisp is a modern, usable, language.

First, thanks for all the effort you've put into this. Sometimes skeptical questioning comes across as negativity, I hope this wasn't the case.

A previous Elnode announcement was what made me actually want to look into Elisp more seriously, but I went straight into the Emacs Elisp manual, and found it rather low-level when it came to list construction. So I asked around:

   http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157512

(incidentally, with "not a real lisp" I meant the admittedly narrow "isn't the same thing at all" in relation to Common Lisp or Scheme)

and gave up because I wasn't interested in Emacs-specific programs.

But I won't argue for or against that. Will give it another go starting from your site.

Re: Elnode, the EmacsLisp webserver, nears release

#33

Post by nic-ferrier » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 10:10 PM UTC

opminion wrote: post #32

nic-ferrier wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There weren't enough in the article? It is a real lisp. I think the problem you're experiencing is that EmacsLisp has a long history. So some things that have been said were said a loooong time ago and are no longer relevant. Take a look at the other articles I have on my blog... it's clear EmacsLisp is a modern, usable, language.

First, thanks for all the effort you've put into this. Sometimes skeptical questioning comes across as negativity, I hope this wasn't the case. A previous Elnode announcement was what made me actually want to look into Elisp more seriously, but I went straight into the Emacs Elisp manual, and found it rather low-level when it came to list construction. So I asked around: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157512 (i…

Sorry if I sounded frustrated.

Don't listen to the haters. EmacsLisp is a real Lisp. You can use it to do solve real problems. It gets better all the time as people add stuff that has worked for years to the package archives (see elsewhere in this elnode thread where someone adds a redis client).

What I would say is you need to reach out more, come to #emacs and ask lisp questions. Play with Emacs (it's SO easy) and check out all the videos that people have been doing recently (http://emacsrocks.com/ and the one from me today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7DPvEi7Jg).

Elnode is a good way to get into Lisp because it's easy and it's in Emacs which is just a great Lisp environment.