4 ms·

Has anyone ever used NewLisp for something interesting? Would you mind talking about your experience? NewLisp, despite the name, is actually quite old at this p

by gecko 11y ago

Has anyone ever used NewLisp for something interesting? Would you mind talking about your experience? NewLisp, despite the name, is actually quite old at this point, and its release cycle has slowed down a bit over the years. I'm assuming it landed so high on the front page because people are interested, so some real-life stories would be helpful. (I have a real-life story that concludes with "so I got fed up and rewrote the thing in Python", but I'm not all convinced that the problem wasn't with me.)

jwr 11y ago
I remember looking at it 12 years ago or so, for embedded applications. For some reason I decided to go with ISLISP instead, though I no longer remember why.
- TheSmoke 11y ago
  oh, so newlisp is not that much new then.
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    Invented 1991 according to Wikipedia.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
    It used to be. It's kind of a bug with new.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > oh, so newlisp is not that much new then. Well, its new compared to Lisp in general.
    - namekuseijin 11y ago
      its features are comparable to old Lisps from the 70's, prior to Scheme and Common Lisp. Nothing really new here at all and lots of old bugs passing for features.
- a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
  > For some reason Wouldn't 99% of people see GPL and move on?
  - jwr 11y ago
    You are being downvoted, unfairly — that was probably the reason why I could not use it back then. And just to clarify, because these discussions often get sidetracked: the GPL is a problem in a commercial setting not because of the source availability requirement, but because of the anti-patent clause, which is basically a minefield.
JeremyReimer 11y ago
Hi there! I fell in love with newLISP a few years ago, mostly for its clean documentation, the fact that everything seemed to make sense, and the fact that it was small and fast. I found the newLISP web framework Dragonfly and adopted it to build a prototype website for my previous company. I used Solr for the document storage engine, and used newlisp's excellent native XML conversion to convert an ugly XML feed into a newLISP list and then into individual Solr documents. Then I used Dragonfly to write a front-end searching application that was launched to a select group of our customers. newLISP made it really easy to prototype rapidly and deliver new features quickly. Dragonfly stopped being updated, so I decided I wanted to make my own web framework. That became newLISP on Rockets (www.newlisponrockets.com) and I released the source on GitHub. Although I haven't updated the newLISP on Rockets website much lately, it's mostly because I'm too busy using Rockets in my current job. I built a searching application for all our documentation, and now I'm busy building business intelligence stuff. It's nothing too fancy, and I don't consider myself a great programmer at all. But I love the fact that newLISP allowed me to make all these things quickly and with few lines of code, and it's easy for me to maintain them afterwards. That's the true value that newLISP has for me.
- oceankid 11y ago
  Nice work on Rockets: the website feels zippy. Not something you can say of web libraries these days. What is a good starting point to pick up on newLISP for someone new with programming? I'd like to do some automation (parse lots of unstructured text) to get good data, create PDFs, accept data from email and have a lightweight web front-end.
  - hilti 11y ago
    I recommend picking up the CodePatterns docs. They're always updated and You'll learn a lot from them. http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html Then there is my original Dragonfly documentation http://dragonfly.apptruck.de/welcome http://dragonfly.apptruck.de/welcome
  - JeremyReimer 11y ago
    I'd start with the newLISP documentation, particularly the Code Patterns page: http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html This is what I learned the language from, and after I got a handle on it I just used their reference manual: http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/manual_frame.html http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/manual_frame.html I'm planning on writing some "intro to web development with Rockets" white papers, but work is keeping me really busy at the moment.
jopython 11y ago
It is so tiny, I have easily deployed it in the form of a 300k something executable and ran across hundreds of hosts. Very good for OPS work. Excellent scripting language , IMHO.
hilti 11y ago
I've written several web applications in newLISP and the Dragonfly Framework (Disclaimer: I'm one of the developers behind the framework). Most of the web apps are running in sales companies. I think it's a very good and easy to learn language for scripting purpose. I use the built-in parallel processing support for scraping, storing data in newLISPs efficient red-black tree implementation and finally serve APIs.

by gecko 11y ago

jwr 11y ago

I remember looking at it 12 years ago or so, for embedded applications. For some reason I decided to go with ISLISP instead, though I no longer remember why.

TheSmoke 11y ago
oh, so newlisp is not that much new then.
- nostrademons 11y ago
  Invented 1991 according to Wikipedia.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 11y ago
  It used to be. It's kind of a bug with new.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > oh, so newlisp is not that much new then. Well, its new compared to Lisp in general.
  - namekuseijin 11y ago
    its features are comparable to old Lisps from the 70's, prior to Scheme and Common Lisp. Nothing really new here at all and lots of old bugs passing for features.
a8da6b0c91d 11y ago
> For some reason Wouldn't 99% of people see GPL and move on?
- jwr 11y ago
  You are being downvoted, unfairly — that was probably the reason why I could not use it back then. And just to clarify, because these discussions often get sidetracked: the GPL is a problem in a commercial setting not because of the source availability requirement, but because of the anti-patent clause, which is basically a minefield.

JeremyReimer 11y ago

Hi there! I fell in love with newLISP a few years ago, mostly for its clean documentation, the fact that everything seemed to make sense, and the fact that it was small and fast. I found the newLISP web framework Dragonfly and adopted it to build a prototype website for my previous company. I used Solr for the document storage engine, and used newlisp's excellent native XML conversion to convert an ugly XML feed into a newLISP list and then into individual Solr documents. Then I used Dragonfly to write a front-end searching application that was launched to a select group of our customers. newLISP made it really easy to prototype rapidly and deliver new features quickly. Dragonfly stopped being updated, so I decided I wanted to make my own web framework. That became newLISP on Rockets (www.newlisponrockets.com) and I released the source on GitHub. Although I haven't updated the newLISP on Rockets website much lately, it's mostly because I'm too busy using Rockets in my current job. I built a searching application for all our documentation, and now I'm busy building business intelligence stuff. It's nothing too fancy, and I don't consider myself a great programmer at all. But I love the fact that newLISP allowed me to make all these things quickly and with few lines of code, and it's easy for me to maintain them afterwards. That's the true value that newLISP has for me.

oceankid 11y ago
Nice work on Rockets: the website feels zippy. Not something you can say of web libraries these days. What is a good starting point to pick up on newLISP for someone new with programming? I'd like to do some automation (parse lots of unstructured text) to get good data, create PDFs, accept data from email and have a lightweight web front-end.
- hilti 11y ago
  I recommend picking up the CodePatterns docs. They're always updated and You'll learn a lot from them. http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html Then there is my original Dragonfly documentation http://dragonfly.apptruck.de/welcome http://dragonfly.apptruck.de/welcome
- JeremyReimer 11y ago
  I'd start with the newLISP documentation, particularly the Code Patterns page: http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html http://www.newlisp.org/CodePatterns.html This is what I learned the language from, and after I got a handle on it I just used their reference manual: http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/manual_frame.html http://www.newlisp.org/downloads/manual_frame.html I'm planning on writing some "intro to web development with Rockets" white papers, but work is keeping me really busy at the moment.

jopython 11y ago

It is so tiny, I have easily deployed it in the form of a 300k something executable and ran across hundreds of hosts. Very good for OPS work. Excellent scripting language , IMHO.

hilti 11y ago

I've written several web applications in newLISP and the Dragonfly Framework (Disclaimer: I'm one of the developers behind the framework). Most of the web apps are running in sales companies. I think it's a very good and easy to learn language for scripting purpose. I use the built-in parallel processing support for scraping, storing data in newLISPs efficient red-black tree implementation and finally serve APIs.