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If you want your brain stretched, I recommend Common Lisp. The #1 issue for folks in my experience had been getting an environment set up. Emacs, SLIME, encodi

If you want your brain stretched, I recommend Common Lisp. The #1 issue for folks in my experience had been getting an environment set up. Emacs, SLIME, encodings, paredit, ... . It's a big barrier to entry.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
I agree (I know I had my issues with Emacs and SLIME when I started; being on Windows didn't particularly help). That said, for people who want to start with CL now, I'd recommend grabbing https://shinmera.github.io/portacle/ https://shinmera.github.io/portacle/. It's a portable Lisp IDE based off a pre-configured Emacs + SLIME + SBCL + Quicklisp + Git combo. I can confirm that it Just Works, out of the box.
- iak8god 9y ago
  Portacle looks very nice. Is anyone here aware of a similar plug & play Emacs-based IDE for Clojure?
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    Cider. https://cider.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cider.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
    - iak8god 9y ago
      I know about cider, but what I'm looking for is a decent, quick download & click to run environment that will let me play around with Clojure. Something you could hand to intro to programming students and have them writing code in a repl in sixty seconds.
      - kornish 9y ago
        Haven't followed its development for a long while but Light Table might be what you're looking for: http://lighttable.com/ http://lighttable.com/
        iak8god 9y ago
        I'll check it out, thanks!
      - Scarbutt 9y ago
        https://sekao.net/nightlight/ https://sekao.net/nightlight/
        iak8god 9y ago
        This looks nice & I'll check it out, but at first glance it doesn't seem to be as simple as what I'm looking for: "For Leiningen users... Add it to your ~/.lein/profiles.clj:" I truly want something that's not for "Leningen users" (or "Boot users") but for people who've never heard of any of those things and just need to start learning how to write code (in Clojure).
- brudgers 9y ago
  Portacle is a great project. My concern with it as a recommendation is that Lispbox was a great project too, until it wasn't...or rather that the enthusiasm of the maintainers of easy to use Common Lisp projects seems likely to be shorter lived than Common Lisp (though perhaps Github may make this less a potential problem). The fact that people get paid to improve and maintain the Racket ecosystem as part of their day jobs in academia is one of the reasons I recommend it for 'how should I start exploring Lisp' (versus learning Common Lisp). https://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/ https://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > the enthusiasm of the maintainers of easy to use Common Lisp projects seems likely to be shorter lived than Common Lisp Not surprising, given that Common Lisp itself is pretty much immortal compared to the typical lifetime of things in our industry :). That said, I know what you mean. I started with Lispbox years ago, and it was already feeling its age back then. I agree with your observation. Sadly, the commercial CL scene seems pretty weak - the two big players (Franz and LispWorks) seem to mostly keep to themselves and focus on the commercial tools they offer.
    - brudgers 9y ago
      One of the 'legacy' features of the Common Lisp community is that it is socially acceptable to charge $2000 per year per seat for software. Though it is not something that I personally have a problem with, my view that paying for software is ok is not all that mainstream these days (imagine paying for a web browser). What I like about Common Lisp is that it is not in flux and so when I Google up a question, the information I get may be ten years old but it is highly likely to be correct. The price is that the format of the information may be more like a technical textbook than a blog or a StackOverflow answer.
ohyes 9y ago
Roswell solves this problem completely. Quick lisp solved it mostly, but Roswell is the finishing touch in my opinion. https://github.com/roswell/roswell https://github.com/roswell/roswell
aerique 9y ago
Just any text editor and reloading the file one's editing works fine as well: shell$ sbcl [... some editing ...] sbcl> (load "file.lisp") As for which Lisp. I advise Common Lisp since it's the most practical of the lot. Doesn't force you into a particular paradigm.
flavio81 9y ago
No entry barrier anymore with Portacle. Download Portacle, it's a ready to use CL environment, which includes Emacs, SLIME, and the SBCL compiler. Works great! Zero configuration!
vindarel 9y ago
a bit late, but we also have an Atom plugin: https://atom.io/packages/atom-slime https://atom.io/packages/atom-slime !

TeMPOraL 9y ago

I agree (I know I had my issues with Emacs and SLIME when I started; being on Windows didn't particularly help). That said, for people who want to start with CL now, I'd recommend grabbing https://shinmera.github.io/portacle/ https://shinmera.github.io/portacle/. It's a portable Lisp IDE based off a pre-configured Emacs + SLIME + SBCL + Quicklisp + Git combo. I can confirm that it Just Works, out of the box.

iak8god 9y ago
Portacle looks very nice. Is anyone here aware of a similar plug & play Emacs-based IDE for Clojure?
- pjmlp 9y ago
  Cider. https://cider.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ https://cider.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
  - iak8god 9y ago
    I know about cider, but what I'm looking for is a decent, quick download & click to run environment that will let me play around with Clojure. Something you could hand to intro to programming students and have them writing code in a repl in sixty seconds.
    - kornish 9y ago
      Haven't followed its development for a long while but Light Table might be what you're looking for: http://lighttable.com/ http://lighttable.com/
      - iak8god 9y ago
        I'll check it out, thanks!
    - Scarbutt 9y ago
      https://sekao.net/nightlight/ https://sekao.net/nightlight/
      - iak8god 9y ago
        This looks nice & I'll check it out, but at first glance it doesn't seem to be as simple as what I'm looking for: "For Leiningen users... Add it to your ~/.lein/profiles.clj:" I truly want something that's not for "Leningen users" (or "Boot users") but for people who've never heard of any of those things and just need to start learning how to write code (in Clojure).
brudgers 9y ago
Portacle is a great project. My concern with it as a recommendation is that Lispbox was a great project too, until it wasn't...or rather that the enthusiasm of the maintainers of easy to use Common Lisp projects seems likely to be shorter lived than Common Lisp (though perhaps Github may make this less a potential problem). The fact that people get paid to improve and maintain the Racket ecosystem as part of their day jobs in academia is one of the reasons I recommend it for 'how should I start exploring Lisp' (versus learning Common Lisp). https://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/ https://common-lisp.net/project/lispbox/
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > the enthusiasm of the maintainers of easy to use Common Lisp projects seems likely to be shorter lived than Common Lisp Not surprising, given that Common Lisp itself is pretty much immortal compared to the typical lifetime of things in our industry :). That said, I know what you mean. I started with Lispbox years ago, and it was already feeling its age back then. I agree with your observation. Sadly, the commercial CL scene seems pretty weak - the two big players (Franz and LispWorks) seem to mostly keep to themselves and focus on the commercial tools they offer.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    One of the 'legacy' features of the Common Lisp community is that it is socially acceptable to charge $2000 per year per seat for software. Though it is not something that I personally have a problem with, my view that paying for software is ok is not all that mainstream these days (imagine paying for a web browser). What I like about Common Lisp is that it is not in flux and so when I Google up a question, the information I get may be ten years old but it is highly likely to be correct. The price is that the format of the information may be more like a technical textbook than a blog or a StackOverflow answer.

ohyes 9y ago

Roswell solves this problem completely. Quick lisp solved it mostly, but Roswell is the finishing touch in my opinion. https://github.com/roswell/roswell https://github.com/roswell/roswell

aerique 9y ago

Just any text editor and reloading the file one's editing works fine as well: shell$ sbcl [... some editing ...] sbcl> (load "file.lisp") As for which Lisp. I advise Common Lisp since it's the most practical of the lot. Doesn't force you into a particular paradigm.

flavio81 9y ago

No entry barrier anymore with Portacle. Download Portacle, it's a ready to use CL environment, which includes Emacs, SLIME, and the SBCL compiler. Works great! Zero configuration!

vindarel 9y ago

a bit late, but we also have an Atom plugin: https://atom.io/packages/atom-slime https://atom.io/packages/atom-slime !