7 ms·

Lisp + Emacs + SLIME: miss no longer. Picking them all up is a tall order though.

by mclehman 9y ago

taeric 9y ago
What do you mean with "picking them all up?"
- _mhr_ 9y ago
  They mean the learning curve is steep.
  - taeric 9y ago
    Ah, fair enough. The nice thing is most repl's have the same bindings as each other. So, some basic drills can get you up to speed.
  - pklausler 9y ago
    A "steep learning curve" actually means that the amount learnt grows rapidly over time. It's odd how this basically obvious conceptualization has had its meaning inverted in popular usage.
    - taeric 9y ago
      This is one of my pet peeves, as well. Though I have moved on. Colloquially, it is clear how folks take that saying. Just transpose the chart if it helps you think about it. That is, it may have originated with that meaning. But it is far from unique in having the general meaning shifted with use.
pjmlp 9y ago
Emacs suffers from not being like Lisp machines REPL, meaning lacking graphical display on buffers. If I remember correctly, XEmacs used to support it (which was my favorite fork), but it seems to have faded away. For example, try to achieve this demo on Emacs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk
- abhirag 9y ago
  I have never used a Lisp Machine so forgive my naivety but I saw the demo and you seem to be referring to the ability of displaying images inline in a buffer. Emacs can definitely do that, I have used Emacs IPython Notebook[1] which is a REPL supporting this. I could fire up a jupyter notebook and use pillow[2] to recreate the image manipulation part of the demo. [1] -- (https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook/blob/master/README.rst https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook/blob/mast...) [2] -- (https://python-pillow.org/ https://python-pillow.org/)
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    That is partially what I was referring to. The other part, which might not be visible on that video is the integration of debugger into the REPL, and the ability to redo a piece of code after breaking into the debugger and fixing it. So you can do something like, REPL => error (ask to start debugger) => track down and fix error => restart error expression => finish the execution of the original REPL expression with the respective result.
    - abhirag 9y ago
      The only debugging experience I find enjoyable in Emacs is debugging Clojure using cider[1] and I think it comes close to what you are describing but I think you might already be aware of that :) [1] -- (https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/doc/debugging.md https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/doc/debug...)
    - bitwize 9y ago
      SLIME doesn't give you this?
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        I don't know, back when I cared about Lisp development on Emacs, SLIME wasn't a thing, as you might understand from my XEmacs reference.

Lisp + Emacs + SLIME: miss no longer. Picking them all up is a tall order though.

taeric 9y ago

What do you mean with "picking them all up?"

_mhr_ 9y ago
They mean the learning curve is steep.
- taeric 9y ago
  Ah, fair enough. The nice thing is most repl's have the same bindings as each other. So, some basic drills can get you up to speed.
- pklausler 9y ago
  A "steep learning curve" actually means that the amount learnt grows rapidly over time. It's odd how this basically obvious conceptualization has had its meaning inverted in popular usage.
  - taeric 9y ago
    This is one of my pet peeves, as well. Though I have moved on. Colloquially, it is clear how folks take that saying. Just transpose the chart if it helps you think about it. That is, it may have originated with that meaning. But it is far from unique in having the general meaning shifted with use.

pjmlp 9y ago

Emacs suffers from not being like Lisp machines REPL, meaning lacking graphical display on buffers. If I remember correctly, XEmacs used to support it (which was my favorite fork), but it seems to have faded away. For example, try to achieve this demo on Emacs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4-YnLpLgtk

abhirag 9y ago
I have never used a Lisp Machine so forgive my naivety but I saw the demo and you seem to be referring to the ability of displaying images inline in a buffer. Emacs can definitely do that, I have used Emacs IPython Notebook[1] which is a REPL supporting this. I could fire up a jupyter notebook and use pillow[2] to recreate the image manipulation part of the demo. [1] -- (https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook/blob/master/README.rst https://github.com/millejoh/emacs-ipython-notebook/blob/mast...) [2] -- (https://python-pillow.org/ https://python-pillow.org/)
- pjmlp 9y ago
  That is partially what I was referring to. The other part, which might not be visible on that video is the integration of debugger into the REPL, and the ability to redo a piece of code after breaking into the debugger and fixing it. So you can do something like, REPL => error (ask to start debugger) => track down and fix error => restart error expression => finish the execution of the original REPL expression with the respective result.
  - abhirag 9y ago
    The only debugging experience I find enjoyable in Emacs is debugging Clojure using cider[1] and I think it comes close to what you are describing but I think you might already be aware of that :) [1] -- (https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/doc/debugging.md https://github.com/clojure-emacs/cider/blob/master/doc/debug...)
  - bitwize 9y ago
    SLIME doesn't give you this?
    - pjmlp 9y ago
      I don't know, back when I cared about Lisp development on Emacs, SLIME wasn't a thing, as you might understand from my XEmacs reference.