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Maybe I've just been blind to it but feels like CL has been getting mentioned more on HN lately (I do remember the early days when Lisp/Scheme/Arc were mentione

Maybe I've just been blind to it but feels like CL has been getting mentioned more on HN lately (I do remember the early days when Lisp/Scheme/Arc were mentioned a lot since this site runs on Arc). Actually gone through some of that Common Lisp the hard way that was linked here not terribly long ago.

ranit 4y ago
> Common Lisp the hard way that was linked here not terribly long ago Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34326311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34326311
sp33der89 4y ago
So how is programming in Common Lisp these days? I know a bit of Clojure/Fennel, but I feel like the Common Lisp ecosystem is a lot more fractured(I might very well be wrong tho)?
- runevault 4y ago
  Feels alright though I'm still early in relearning it. Going through that Learning CL the hard way[1] plus grabbed On Lisp and slowly working through that as well. I also need to really mess with Quicklisp which I set up to give me a package manager. Alive is a damn good plugin for CL on VS Code if you don't wanna go down the Emacs hole. It is worth mentioning Hard Way still has a bunch of holes in it, like I got to the chapter on vectors and it is basically blank [1] - https://llthw.common-lisp.dev/ https://llthw.common-lisp.dev/
  - sph 4y ago
    Same, still trying to get a good book that's pragmatic and for experienced developers. Many starts from the basics, or don't even talk about stuff like Quicklisp and ASDF. I want a book to make production-ready software in Common Lisp, not to faff around. The Paul Graham "On Lisp" book seems excellent, and I'll dive into it next.
    - runevault 4y ago
      FYI PG put the PDF up on his site so you can just legally download it.
      - sph 4y ago
        I have bookmarked this version with restored images: https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html
    - sp33der89 4y ago
      Yea this is a thing too, I have no idea what is recommended in the current ecosystem. SBCL + Quicklisp? I don't even really know what ASDF is.
      - runevault 4y ago
        If you want true common lisp SBCL is probably the most universally known, and yeah everything I've read indicates one of the first things you should do is download and run the quicklisp setup so you have it working with your environment. Though it is funny how Hard Way did it during initial setup but then hasn't used it at all and I'm a chunk of the way through. Even as a beginner book I'd probably briefly touch on packages because it is so important to modern development.
      - vindarel 4y ago
        https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ ? Implementations, Quicklisp and ASDF explained
        sph 4y ago
        Thank you. I have come across your posts about moving from Python to CL, and the work you've been doing with the cookbook and other libraries is very much appreciated. Your recent efforts might be one of the reasons there is a little bit of Lisp hype on this forum lately :-)
        4y ago
- p_l 4y ago
  It's not very fractured, especially in open source as many "common libraries" support most implementations. It very much helps that there's a single standard that is quite rich (unlike Scheme) which makes for much easier portability between implementations, to the point that somewhat common repeated trope was developers using one implementation for faster iteration and another for deployment (for example, CCL for development and SBCL for faster code in deployment, or CCL/SBCL for development and ECL for target deployment).
Syntonicles 4y ago
I spent some time this year using Common Lisp. It's expanding my mind and I see all sorts of alternate histories. I'm starting to feel very curious about SmallTalk for that same reason. There have been a lot of attempts to revitalize Lisp. Clojure is the one that comes to mind, and I do like that language. My personal take CL simply has a marketing problem. The name sounds so stale and boring that I never thought to pick it up. "Common" may have been a word that invoked unity in a fractured ecosystem at some point in time, but today it communicates "Nothing Special".
- truckerbill 4y ago
  It's too married to emacs right now
  - runevault 4y ago
    I'd say it is worth trying VSCode and Alive, I've enjoyed the little bit I've done with it so far, has hot keys for things like compile file or just compile current form.
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    What's wrong with vlime?
- SanjayMehta 4y ago
  Exposure to Smalltalk was very helpful in getting Objective C.
tmtvl 4y ago
People sticking to their good intentions for the new year, maybe? Common Lisp is a pretty great language, though (especially with defstar and alexandria).
- runevault 4y ago
  I actually don't know defstar or alexandria but I'm very rusty on CL (touched it I dunno a decade ago? along with a bit of time off and on with Racket scheme and Clojure at various points).
fm2606 4y ago
I completely agree about seeing more CL related topics here on HN. I thought since I am actively learning CL that it was due to "frequency illusion" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
- fithisux 4y ago
  What are you using to learn?
  - fm2606 4y ago
    Mostly books. Old school ;-) Toureztky's Common Lisp A Gentle Intro to Symbolic Programming Norvig's PAIP Seibel's Practical Common Lisp Graham's ANSI Common Lisp I'd like to snag a copy of Sonya Keene's book on CLOS but hesitant to drop $50+ for a used book.
    - runevault 4y ago
      oh man you remind me I have a copy of PAIP I never fully worked through... Also Lisp in Small Pieces (I went through a helluva lisp phase a long time ago but never got as deep as I should have).

ranit 4y ago

> Common Lisp the hard way that was linked here not terribly long ago Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34326311 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34326311

sp33der89 4y ago

So how is programming in Common Lisp these days? I know a bit of Clojure/Fennel, but I feel like the Common Lisp ecosystem is a lot more fractured(I might very well be wrong tho)?

runevault 4y ago
Feels alright though I'm still early in relearning it. Going through that Learning CL the hard way[1] plus grabbed On Lisp and slowly working through that as well. I also need to really mess with Quicklisp which I set up to give me a package manager. Alive is a damn good plugin for CL on VS Code if you don't wanna go down the Emacs hole. It is worth mentioning Hard Way still has a bunch of holes in it, like I got to the chapter on vectors and it is basically blank [1] - https://llthw.common-lisp.dev/ https://llthw.common-lisp.dev/
- sph 4y ago
  Same, still trying to get a good book that's pragmatic and for experienced developers. Many starts from the basics, or don't even talk about stuff like Quicklisp and ASDF. I want a book to make production-ready software in Common Lisp, not to faff around. The Paul Graham "On Lisp" book seems excellent, and I'll dive into it next.
  - runevault 4y ago
    FYI PG put the PDF up on his site so you can just legally download it.
    - sph 4y ago
      I have bookmarked this version with restored images: https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html https://www.lurklurk.org/onlisp/onlisp.html
  - sp33der89 4y ago
    Yea this is a thing too, I have no idea what is recommended in the current ecosystem. SBCL + Quicklisp? I don't even really know what ASDF is.
    - runevault 4y ago
      If you want true common lisp SBCL is probably the most universally known, and yeah everything I've read indicates one of the first things you should do is download and run the quicklisp setup so you have it working with your environment. Though it is funny how Hard Way did it during initial setup but then hasn't used it at all and I'm a chunk of the way through. Even as a beginner book I'd probably briefly touch on packages because it is so important to modern development.
    - vindarel 4y ago
      https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ ? Implementations, Quicklisp and ASDF explained
      - sph 4y ago
        Thank you. I have come across your posts about moving from Python to CL, and the work you've been doing with the cookbook and other libraries is very much appreciated. Your recent efforts might be one of the reasons there is a little bit of Lisp hype on this forum lately :-)
      - 4y ago
p_l 4y ago
It's not very fractured, especially in open source as many "common libraries" support most implementations. It very much helps that there's a single standard that is quite rich (unlike Scheme) which makes for much easier portability between implementations, to the point that somewhat common repeated trope was developers using one implementation for faster iteration and another for deployment (for example, CCL for development and SBCL for faster code in deployment, or CCL/SBCL for development and ECL for target deployment).

Syntonicles 4y ago

I spent some time this year using Common Lisp. It's expanding my mind and I see all sorts of alternate histories. I'm starting to feel very curious about SmallTalk for that same reason. There have been a lot of attempts to revitalize Lisp. Clojure is the one that comes to mind, and I do like that language. My personal take CL simply has a marketing problem. The name sounds so stale and boring that I never thought to pick it up. "Common" may have been a word that invoked unity in a fractured ecosystem at some point in time, but today it communicates "Nothing Special".

truckerbill 4y ago
It's too married to emacs right now
- runevault 4y ago
  I'd say it is worth trying VSCode and Alive, I've enjoyed the little bit I've done with it so far, has hot keys for things like compile file or just compile current form.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  What's wrong with vlime?
SanjayMehta 4y ago
Exposure to Smalltalk was very helpful in getting Objective C.

tmtvl 4y ago

People sticking to their good intentions for the new year, maybe? Common Lisp is a pretty great language, though (especially with defstar and alexandria).

runevault 4y ago
I actually don't know defstar or alexandria but I'm very rusty on CL (touched it I dunno a decade ago? along with a bit of time off and on with Racket scheme and Clojure at various points).

fm2606 4y ago

I completely agree about seeing more CL related topics here on HN. I thought since I am actively learning CL that it was due to "frequency illusion" [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

fithisux 4y ago
What are you using to learn?
- fm2606 4y ago
  Mostly books. Old school ;-) Toureztky's Common Lisp A Gentle Intro to Symbolic Programming Norvig's PAIP Seibel's Practical Common Lisp Graham's ANSI Common Lisp I'd like to snag a copy of Sonya Keene's book on CLOS but hesitant to drop $50+ for a used book.
  - runevault 4y ago
    oh man you remind me I have a copy of PAIP I never fully worked through... Also Lisp in Small Pieces (I went through a helluva lisp phase a long time ago but never got as deep as I should have).