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Skip the complicated stuff and pretend you're using Notepad. No? Being a beginner to Lisp doesn't imply being a beginner to programming. Why would an experie

Skip the complicated stuff and pretend you're using Notepad. No? Being a beginner to Lisp doesn't imply being a beginner to programming. Why would an experienced non-Lisp programmer find being subjected to a Notepad-like development experience worth even the slightest consideration? (EDIT: And non-experienced non-Lisp programmers also have a preferred tool-set, which is likely superior to Notepad.) Emacs can be great - to some people. The "You have to use Emacs to program in Lisp" meme is not great.

melling 11y ago
So don't use it like Notepad. Give it the full hour. And I doubt if you have to use Emacs to write in Lisp. Let me Google it for you: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94792/using-vim-for-lisp-development http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94792/using-vim-for-lisp-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891
pvaldes 11y ago
"you have to use Emacs to program in lisp..." You don't. Nobody stops you to use vim and fire a clisp repl instead if you want. Older but much friendly to start than sbcl. Emacs as a barrier to lisp is an interesting concept. To me was exactly the opposite.
- WalterGR 11y ago
  You don't. Nobody stops you to use vim and fire a clisp repl instead if you want. Of course. And there could very well be a service that accepts handwritten source code via the post, transcribes it, executes it, and mails you the output. In context, I'm responding to the following: • the article's preference for beginner-friendly suggestions (e.g. don't overwhelm beginners with an abundance of choice) • the specific text I quote in my original comment above, and • the fact that Emacs+SLIME is the de facto standard answer to every Lisp beginner who asks for an IDE.
  - pvaldes 11y ago
    "Emacs+SLIME is the de facto standard answer to every Lisp beginner who asks for an IDE" Is a good advice because emacs is awesome, multipurpose, and free. But, you have choices. You could use also slimv, the "slime for vim" for example. And Vim is also awesome, multipurpose and free. If you are a total beginner that do not want to learn neither vim nor emacs (something that you will regret when you finally learn one of them some years later) just forget all about superior modes, fire a clisp repl in bash and use your favourite text editor to write and copy-paste. If you want a simple plan to start, is pretty simple If you want it more simple, just save some bucks and buy a commercial lisp, like allegro for example that comes with a nice IDE: allegro-composer. You obtain what you pay for.
    - WalterGR 11y ago
      But, you have choices. Correct. It would be nice if they were appropriately presented to beginners. like allegro for example that comes with a nice IDE: allegro-composer. Do you... use Allegro? Do you find it good? Have you used LispWorks? In the past couple/few years, Franz introduced a single-stepper.[1] They released a video alongside the new feature, demonstrating it. Literally, by 20 minutes into the video, the narrator was still mucking about with configuration and such and hadn't gotten to the point of being able to single-step through Lisp code. (Also, Allegro's licensing terms require a runtime license fee for every unit of software developed with Allegro that you distribute. LispWorks' do not.) [1] (It's unconscionable to me that that could be a new-ish feature. I don't even know that I had heard of the term "single-stepper" prior to that - I always just assumed it was a natural v0.1 part of a debugger that didn't bear even mentioning. But what can you do...)
      - pvaldes 11y ago
        Is only an example (but your experience with lispworks is appreciated).
    - doanyway 11y ago
      I am liking spacemacs better than slimv https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/contrib/slime https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/contrib/sl...
aidenn0 11y ago
"Why would an experienced non-Lisp programmer find being subjected to a Notepad-like development experience worth even the slightest consideration?" Is this any different from other IDEs? As a vim user, Eclipse certainly feels more-or-less like notepad.
lispm 11y ago
> Emacs can be great - to some people. The "You have to use Emacs to program in Lisp" meme is not great. You don't have to use GNU Emacs to write Lisp code. It just happens that a popular Editor written in Lisp and extensible in Lisp is somehow the natural choice for Lisp developers.

melling 11y ago

So don't use it like Notepad. Give it the full hour. And I doubt if you have to use Emacs to write in Lisp. Let me Google it for you: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94792/using-vim-for-lisp-development http://stackoverflow.com/questions/94792/using-vim-for-lisp-... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19891

pvaldes 11y ago

"you have to use Emacs to program in lisp..." You don't. Nobody stops you to use vim and fire a clisp repl instead if you want. Older but much friendly to start than sbcl. Emacs as a barrier to lisp is an interesting concept. To me was exactly the opposite.

WalterGR 11y ago
You don't. Nobody stops you to use vim and fire a clisp repl instead if you want. Of course. And there could very well be a service that accepts handwritten source code via the post, transcribes it, executes it, and mails you the output. In context, I'm responding to the following: • the article's preference for beginner-friendly suggestions (e.g. don't overwhelm beginners with an abundance of choice) • the specific text I quote in my original comment above, and • the fact that Emacs+SLIME is the de facto standard answer to every Lisp beginner who asks for an IDE.
- pvaldes 11y ago
  "Emacs+SLIME is the de facto standard answer to every Lisp beginner who asks for an IDE" Is a good advice because emacs is awesome, multipurpose, and free. But, you have choices. You could use also slimv, the "slime for vim" for example. And Vim is also awesome, multipurpose and free. If you are a total beginner that do not want to learn neither vim nor emacs (something that you will regret when you finally learn one of them some years later) just forget all about superior modes, fire a clisp repl in bash and use your favourite text editor to write and copy-paste. If you want a simple plan to start, is pretty simple If you want it more simple, just save some bucks and buy a commercial lisp, like allegro for example that comes with a nice IDE: allegro-composer. You obtain what you pay for.
  - WalterGR 11y ago
    But, you have choices. Correct. It would be nice if they were appropriately presented to beginners. like allegro for example that comes with a nice IDE: allegro-composer. Do you... use Allegro? Do you find it good? Have you used LispWorks? In the past couple/few years, Franz introduced a single-stepper.[1] They released a video alongside the new feature, demonstrating it. Literally, by 20 minutes into the video, the narrator was still mucking about with configuration and such and hadn't gotten to the point of being able to single-step through Lisp code. (Also, Allegro's licensing terms require a runtime license fee for every unit of software developed with Allegro that you distribute. LispWorks' do not.) [1] (It's unconscionable to me that that could be a new-ish feature. I don't even know that I had heard of the term "single-stepper" prior to that - I always just assumed it was a natural v0.1 part of a debugger that didn't bear even mentioning. But what can you do...)
    - pvaldes 11y ago
      Is only an example (but your experience with lispworks is appreciated).
  - doanyway 11y ago
    I am liking spacemacs better than slimv https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/contrib/slime https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs/tree/master/contrib/sl...

aidenn0 11y ago

"Why would an experienced non-Lisp programmer find being subjected to a Notepad-like development experience worth even the slightest consideration?" Is this any different from other IDEs? As a vim user, Eclipse certainly feels more-or-less like notepad.

lispm 11y ago

> Emacs can be great - to some people. The "You have to use Emacs to program in Lisp" meme is not great. You don't have to use GNU Emacs to write Lisp code. It just happens that a popular Editor written in Lisp and extensible in Lisp is somehow the natural choice for Lisp developers.