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To any lisp enthusiasts who wonder why the language family isn't more popular: this is 99% of why. You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-s

by dTal 10y ago

To any lisp enthusiasts who wonder why the language family isn't more popular: this is 99% of why. You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w". Any attempt to use any other tool will be met with incredulous responses to "just use Emacs". It's such a shame because the development environment for Lisp could be so much better than other languages. It could be mindblowingly futuristic, instead of mindblowingly archaic.

lispm 10y ago
> You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w" You are misinformed. I'm using a GNU Emacs (-> Aquamacs) on the Mac and cut/paste/copy are invoked with the usual command keys. But usually I use the LispWorks editor, which is also in the Emacs family, and even there cut/copy/paste is the usual command sequence... Both editors are built with excellent Lisp support. One is written in C + Emacs Lisp and the other one in Common Lisp. > mindblowingly archaic You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part?
- fao_ 10y ago
  > You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part? "You haven't used a PDP-10, how would you be able to deal with a smartphone?"
  - lispm 10y ago
    He didn't talk about old technology like 'smartphones', which existed as products (Nokia Communicator, ...) 20 years ago, but claimed that much better 'futuristic' IDEs for Lisp are possible, though what he claims may currently only exist in his imagination...
kazinator 10y ago
I've been programming in Lisp for 17 years now. I've always done it in Vim.
- lispm 10y ago
  my sincerest condolences
sigjuice 10y ago
Any large piece of software will have its own terminology (car, cdr, frame, window, buffer, yank, kill, meta, ...). It is a shame that people would rather fixate on these superficial things instead of the minimal effort to get familiarized.
abustamam 10y ago
I've just started using Clojure (another Lisp) and I use IntelliJ IDEa with the Cursive plug-in, with par-infer to deal with the parens. It works like a charm. I can have a REPL and my code right in front of me, I can cmd-down to go to a function definition, and it's overall a very pleasant developer experience. Now, I did experiment with Emacs, so I do understand what you're talking about -- kill-ring-save and the related key bindings made zero sense to me, and I was having trouble doing things I'd do easily in IntelliJ.

by dTal 10y ago

lispm 10y ago

> You have to use an editor where "copy" is called "Kill-ring-save" is invoked with "Meta-w" You are misinformed. I'm using a GNU Emacs (-> Aquamacs) on the Mac and cut/paste/copy are invoked with the usual command keys. But usually I use the LispWorks editor, which is also in the Emacs family, and even there cut/copy/paste is the usual command sequence... Both editors are built with excellent Lisp support. One is written in C + Emacs Lisp and the other one in Common Lisp. > mindblowingly archaic You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part?

fao_ 10y ago
> You haven't even understood the old part, how would you be able to deal with the futuristic part? "You haven't used a PDP-10, how would you be able to deal with a smartphone?"
- lispm 10y ago
  He didn't talk about old technology like 'smartphones', which existed as products (Nokia Communicator, ...) 20 years ago, but claimed that much better 'futuristic' IDEs for Lisp are possible, though what he claims may currently only exist in his imagination...

kazinator 10y ago

I've been programming in Lisp for 17 years now. I've always done it in Vim.

lispm 10y ago
my sincerest condolences

sigjuice 10y ago

Any large piece of software will have its own terminology (car, cdr, frame, window, buffer, yank, kill, meta, ...). It is a shame that people would rather fixate on these superficial things instead of the minimal effort to get familiarized.

abustamam 10y ago

I've just started using Clojure (another Lisp) and I use IntelliJ IDEa with the Cursive plug-in, with par-infer to deal with the parens. It works like a charm. I can have a REPL and my code right in front of me, I can cmd-down to go to a function definition, and it's overall a very pleasant developer experience. Now, I did experiment with Emacs, so I do understand what you're talking about -- kill-ring-save and the related key bindings made zero sense to me, and I was having trouble doing things I'd do easily in IntelliJ.