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Common Lisp

lisp-lang.org

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Re: Common Lisp

#51
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 built this around 2015-2016, the idea was to have a "soft" landing page with the headlining features (stability, performance etc.) and links to further pages: the success stories page[0] (which should have been emphasized more) and the wiki[1]. [0]: https://lisp-lang.org/success/ [1]: https://lisp-lang.org/wiki/

I thought this was a recent effort, so I'm sorry if I was too harsh.

Re: Common Lisp

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website looks good! Do you still use Common Lisp? If not, what are the reasons?

I like Common Lisp but I no longer use it. I'm pretty much completely burned out on dynamic typing. It feels like building on sand. I want calmer programming, even if it's less powerful. At present I'm building a new language[0] with that goal in mind. [0]: https://github.com/austral/austral

Check out https://coalton-lang.github.io/ !

Re: Common Lisp

#53
I've been curious about Common Lisp in the past but never really got started because I can't seem to find very good documentation. What do veteran CL users use as a reference? This maybe? http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index...

I suppose I've "become accustomed to a certain lifestyle" coming from Racket's excellent documentation. But even if you ignore Racket, the R6RS reference (for example) seems way more readable than the CL spec: https://docs.racket-lang.org/r6rs/r6rs-std/index.html Same goes for Clojure, which I've never used: https://clojure.org/reference/documentation

This is not meant to be an attack on Common Lisp; I'm just trying to learn.

EDIT: I just saw https://lisp-lang.org/spec/ which says "We're currently working on parsing the TeX sources of the specification to generate a more modern version of the CLHS. This might take a while." I'm looking forward to seeing the result!

Re: Common Lisp

#54

I've been curious about Common Lisp in the past but never really got started because I can't seem to find very good documentation. What do veteran CL users use as a reference? This maybe? http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index... I suppose I've "become accustomed to a certain lifestyle" coming from Racket's excellent documentation. But even if you ignore Racket, the R6RS reference (for example)…

Norvig's PAIP is what won me over from Scheme to Common Lisp. https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp

Re: Common Lisp

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website looks good! Do you still use Common Lisp? If not, what are the reasons?

I like Common Lisp but I no longer use it. I'm pretty much completely burned out on dynamic typing. It feels like building on sand. I want calmer programming, even if it's less powerful. At present I'm building a new language[0] with that goal in mind. [0]: https://github.com/austral/austral

I'm curious how extensively you use automated tests in dynamically-typed languages? I find that the types in statically-typed languages, especially OCaml, take up a lot of the load of tests.

Of course, types can prove things tests can't, and especially the linear types you're using in Austral.

I've been wondering what a "tiny Rust" would look like, so Austral looks pretty interesting.

Re: Common Lisp

#56
post #46

This looks like a rewrite of this web site? I don’t remember it looking so visually appealing. I would hope that every programmer has a “happy language” that they most enjoy using. CL is my happy language, both for personal projects and also since around 1982 I have probably been paid to use Common Lisp for about five of the last 39 years. This may sound sacrilegious, but in modern times I steer people newly interest…

How do you find Lisp work, out of interest? Especially for an experienced professional without commercial lisp experience?

I enjoy developing in Lisp but the number of jobs are smaller than Python/C++/Java/etc.

Re: Common Lisp

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The website looks good! Do you still use Common Lisp? If not, what are the reasons?

I like Common Lisp but I no longer use it. I'm pretty much completely burned out on dynamic typing. It feels like building on sand. I want calmer programming, even if it's less powerful. At present I'm building a new language[0] with that goal in mind. [0]: https://github.com/austral/austral

Can you elaborate on linear types? What do they bring to the table and how do they work ?

Re: Common Lisp

#58

I've been curious about Common Lisp in the past but never really got started because I can't seem to find very good documentation. What do veteran CL users use as a reference? This maybe? http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/index... I suppose I've "become accustomed to a certain lifestyle" coming from Racket's excellent documentation. But even if you ignore Racket, the R6RS reference (for example)…

My favorite quick reference I have printed out is http://clqr.boundp.org/ It's nice to just quickly explore what's available in the base language too.

But when I don't want to flip through it, or find the short description for something insufficient, then yeah the HyperSpec is usually my first stop for quickly referencing something. I use vim, so I just move my cursor over a symbol and type ",h" and that opens a browser tab on that thing in the hyperspec -- e.g. if I want to remind myself what the state parameter of make-random-state does, I open http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_mk_r... Though I often first type ",s" which is just an alias for (describe 'symbol) which shows me locally the symbol documentation, and for this one I'd learn the same thing without having to have my browser open. I think some people configure their emacs to do the common IDE thing of showing you the doc along with the function signature as you type, I just have the latter. I also make use of jump-to-source since reading the code is often the quickest way of answering a question about it.

PAIP is a great book, but I tend to use PCL as a quick reference: https://gigamonkeys.com/book/ Especially until you use classes/format/conditions/loop enough to get used to them, chapters 17/18/19/22 are helpful. It's still a recommended first book for newcomers that's worth going through entirely though, not just as a reference.

https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ is a useful community cookbook with info on a lot of topics.

CLTL2 is a reference I haven't used that much, there are a few things that are in it that didn't make it to the ANSI spec, but what I have read I've found useful and clarifying. https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node1.html Guy Steele (whose 67th birthday is today) is a great writer.

Re: Common Lisp

#60
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…

"Unbalanced" python people? Do you have examples? I don't do python and have no basis of experience with python, besides the fact that I have never installed a python program successfully with their package manager. Is python the language that has spread furthest from programming circles? It probably used to be VB mostly due to Office, but with Python at #2 in Tiobe ahead of Java and behind only C, I'd guess yes.

Here's a good example of unbalanced people: https://github.com/pypa/pipenv/issues/2228#issuecomment-3926...
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