4 ms·

I've flirted with Lisp over the years. I appreciate its simplicity, I'm always casting curious glances when lispers talk about slinging code around, editing it

I've flirted with Lisp over the years. I appreciate its simplicity, I'm always casting curious glances when lispers talk about slinging code around, editing it live, this (alleged) blissful nirvana of pure digital expression. I used to work at a company that used lisp (I worked on other things, but I poked at it occasionally), and I've done a couple of small projects in Clojure, just to try it out. I've even made a couple interpreters/transpilers of my own. But advocates always seem to emphasize how fun and effortless lisp is, how that's one of its biggest strengths. And frankly, that has not been my experience. Mainly because of the tooling. I don't have the dedication to dive into learning emacs for something I'm merely curious about. Clojure's experience was less esoteric in some ways, but the tooling was more complicated in other, more Java-flavored ways. If somebody made an all-in-one Lisp toolkit tomorrow, complete with a modern editor experience that just worked, I would revisit Lisp in a heartbeat. Who knows, I might become a convert. I doubt I'm the only one.

yourapostasy 5y ago
Check out Portacle [1], or if you already are rocking Emacs and SBCL and just want the bare minimum dot-emacs to kick around Lisp, check out emacs4cl [2]. There is an older project called "Lisp In A Box", but it hasn't been kept up to date so most beginners start with Portacle these days. [1] https://portacle.github.io/ https://portacle.github.io/ [2] https://github.com/susam/emacs4cl https://github.com/susam/emacs4cl
- mst 5y ago
  Yesterday, I installed Portacle and then worked through the emacs C-h t tutorial, and then started playing around. This is probably attempt five and the first time I haven't bounced off without even getting through the tutorial, but damn if it isn't fun. So I think "we need to find a way to get people to the 'damn if it isn't fun' part faster and more reliably" is a worthy goal.
cbrozefsky 5y ago
Sounds like you're jealous of our lisp swagger and want your mom to buy you the Hot Topic t-shirt version.
askonomm 5y ago
If you use any of the JetBrains IDE's then full Clojure support is just a plugin install away (Cursive), likewise with VS Code (Calva). It really is pretty effortless these days.

yourapostasy 5y ago

Check out Portacle [1], or if you already are rocking Emacs and SBCL and just want the bare minimum dot-emacs to kick around Lisp, check out emacs4cl [2]. There is an older project called "Lisp In A Box", but it hasn't been kept up to date so most beginners start with Portacle these days. [1] https://portacle.github.io/ https://portacle.github.io/ [2] https://github.com/susam/emacs4cl https://github.com/susam/emacs4cl

mst 5y ago
Yesterday, I installed Portacle and then worked through the emacs C-h t tutorial, and then started playing around. This is probably attempt five and the first time I haven't bounced off without even getting through the tutorial, but damn if it isn't fun. So I think "we need to find a way to get people to the 'damn if it isn't fun' part faster and more reliably" is a worthy goal.

cbrozefsky 5y ago

Sounds like you're jealous of our lisp swagger and want your mom to buy you the Hot Topic t-shirt version.

askonomm 5y ago

If you use any of the JetBrains IDE's then full Clojure support is just a plugin install away (Cursive), likewise with VS Code (Calva). It really is pretty effortless these days.