4 ms·

I am not a professional coder, just an amateur. Following the example of LISP, and even lambda-calculus, I was able to build a text editor with a programming la

I am not a professional coder, just an amateur. Following the example of LISP, and even lambda-calculus, I was able to build a text editor with a programming language, working on any web browser: http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/ http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/ , that I use daily to compose quite complex documents containing code evaluated in realtime. I would not have even thought of undertaking such an exercise without the existence of LISP.

implements 4y ago
Interesting link - but I was thrown by the two-way scrolling for a bit!
- martyalain 4y ago
  since I discovered this presentation I can't do without it, especially on a tablet or smartphone. And on a big screen the zoom effects are amazing...
ctrlmeta 4y ago
Interesting. Can you share the text editor? Can I try it out somewhere? Is the editor itself written in Lisp?
- martyalain 4y ago
  Yes you can. Follow explanations in http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks . The evaluator is written in javascript and the editor is just PHP. You can freely download from http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/?view=download http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/?view=download and your opinion is welcome.
- Qem 4y ago
  Speaking of text editors, I think one thing that hampers adoption of lisps is being a bit more beginner unfriendly, at least for most implementations. The developing environment is trickier to set up, and a common recommendation I often hear is to learn Emacs first, what is quite a upfront investment, while in, say, python, you can just launch IDLE and start working in a basic, but proper environment right away.
  - vindarel 4y ago
    Good news, today SLIMA for Atom is easy to set up. Alive for VSCode is getting there. See more: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (But I agree, the editor question was slowing adoption.)
  - gglitch 4y ago
    > I think one thing that hampers adoption of lisps is being a bit more beginner unfriendly I realize you're talking mainly (exclusively?) about the editor situation, with which I don't disagree; but aside from that, I feel like learning Lisp as my first language sort of brain-damaged me for learning other languages, even ones thought to be simple to get started with like js or Python. The Lisp syntax and programming model are so simple to wrap your mind around that everything else, to me at the time anyway, looked noisy and inconsistent. Then I discovered Tcl and Prolog, found them as easy as Lisp to work with, and discovered I just have a super low tolerance for syntactic complexity.

implements 4y ago

Interesting link - but I was thrown by the two-way scrolling for a bit!

martyalain 4y ago
since I discovered this presentation I can't do without it, especially on a tablet or smartphone. And on a big screen the zoom effects are amazing...

ctrlmeta 4y ago

Interesting. Can you share the text editor? Can I try it out somewhere? Is the editor itself written in Lisp?

martyalain 4y ago
Yes you can. Follow explanations in http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks . The evaluator is written in javascript and the editor is just PHP. You can freely download from http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/?view=download http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdawalks/?view=download and your opinion is welcome.
Qem 4y ago
Speaking of text editors, I think one thing that hampers adoption of lisps is being a bit more beginner unfriendly, at least for most implementations. The developing environment is trickier to set up, and a common recommendation I often hear is to learn Emacs first, what is quite a upfront investment, while in, say, python, you can just launch IDLE and start working in a basic, but proper environment right away.
- vindarel 4y ago
  Good news, today SLIMA for Atom is easy to set up. Alive for VSCode is getting there. See more: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (But I agree, the editor question was slowing adoption.)
- gglitch 4y ago
  > I think one thing that hampers adoption of lisps is being a bit more beginner unfriendly I realize you're talking mainly (exclusively?) about the editor situation, with which I don't disagree; but aside from that, I feel like learning Lisp as my first language sort of brain-damaged me for learning other languages, even ones thought to be simple to get started with like js or Python. The Lisp syntax and programming model are so simple to wrap your mind around that everything else, to me at the time anyway, looked noisy and inconsistent. Then I discovered Tcl and Prolog, found them as easy as Lisp to work with, and discovered I just have a super low tolerance for syntactic complexity.