8 ms·

I posted the link, but am not one of the developers. This got a little attention a couple of years ago, and I thought to look it up today. It has a nice website

I posted the link, but am not one of the developers. This got a little attention a couple of years ago, and I thought to look it up today. It has a nice website now at least. I really like the idea behind it (small install, lightweight, fast), but don't know how effective it will be without a larger community. I can honestly do without a lot of libraries as long as there are decent built-ins. I really wish Pixie just had a REPL and compiled to native code via LLVM so I could give coworkers a .exe. Edit: Just looked at the github page. It doesn't look very active to me although I wouldn't say dead. The only small lisps I know of in development are Picolisp and Newlisp.

jacobush 10y ago
PicoLisp is very small and extremely powerful at the same time. It has a built in Prolog...
- throwaway7645 10y ago
  Do you use it though? I really like the concepts, but the speed could be better (I know Alexander talked about this), and docs could be more beginner friendly. It's a small expert community.
  - jacobush 10y ago
    I have used it in commercial embedded hardware shipping tens of thousands of units, in the USD 1000 range. Speed is excellent for the most part - where it's not it's trivial to call out to C libraries. Agree about docs but what would really help at this point would be more QA on Stackoverflow. And a good Windows port.
    - throwaway7645 10y ago
      Agreed on the Windows thing. I tend to stay away from Cygwin. I like the new Picolisp site btw. The code on Rosetta code is terse, and uses slightly different idioms than I'm used to.
      - jacobush 10y ago
        Come to think of it, some docker and other fancy container magic could also help adoption. And other such things people use nowadays. Maybe a nodejs integration? Stuff like that.
        throwaway7645 10y ago
        My dream would be to just use something like Picolisp on Windows without the workarounds. Maybe that can be done via the new Bash on Windows10? Idk.
        jacobush 10y ago
        Must be possible with the new Ubuntu layer whatever its called. Edit: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows/ https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-o... They say WSL apps can not interact directly with Windows apps. So yes and no to your question. I would say it would be similar to running in a virtual machine but more integrated.
      - jacobush 10y ago
        Cygwin is great for processing data and generally have a lot of tools one might be used to from Linux. But when targeting Windows, that is, creating a program FOR Windows, maybe for general distribution, cygwin feels very cumbersome to me. PicoLisp is MIT licensed and small, so could be an integral part of a Windows program. PicoLisp has promise on Windows, but someone would have to step up and maintain a Windows package for it. I have been daydreaming about it but I have too many half-finished projects under my belt to fool myself into starting that too.

jacobush 10y ago

PicoLisp is very small and extremely powerful at the same time. It has a built in Prolog...

throwaway7645 10y ago
Do you use it though? I really like the concepts, but the speed could be better (I know Alexander talked about this), and docs could be more beginner friendly. It's a small expert community.
- jacobush 10y ago
  I have used it in commercial embedded hardware shipping tens of thousands of units, in the USD 1000 range. Speed is excellent for the most part - where it's not it's trivial to call out to C libraries. Agree about docs but what would really help at this point would be more QA on Stackoverflow. And a good Windows port.
  - throwaway7645 10y ago
    Agreed on the Windows thing. I tend to stay away from Cygwin. I like the new Picolisp site btw. The code on Rosetta code is terse, and uses slightly different idioms than I'm used to.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      Come to think of it, some docker and other fancy container magic could also help adoption. And other such things people use nowadays. Maybe a nodejs integration? Stuff like that.
      - throwaway7645 10y ago
        My dream would be to just use something like Picolisp on Windows without the workarounds. Maybe that can be done via the new Bash on Windows10? Idk.
        jacobush 10y ago
        Must be possible with the new Ubuntu layer whatever its called. Edit: https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-on-ubuntu-on-windows/ https://blogs.windows.com/buildingapps/2016/03/30/run-bash-o... They say WSL apps can not interact directly with Windows apps. So yes and no to your question. I would say it would be similar to running in a virtual machine but more integrated.
    - jacobush 10y ago
      Cygwin is great for processing data and generally have a lot of tools one might be used to from Linux. But when targeting Windows, that is, creating a program FOR Windows, maybe for general distribution, cygwin feels very cumbersome to me. PicoLisp is MIT licensed and small, so could be an integral part of a Windows program. PicoLisp has promise on Windows, but someone would have to step up and maintain a Windows package for it. I have been daydreaming about it but I have too many half-finished projects under my belt to fool myself into starting that too.