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> bad support for general editors side note: only two years ago we were complaining about the lack of support for VSCode or the Jetbrains suite, now we have wo

> bad support for general editors side note: only two years ago we were complaining about the lack of support for VSCode or the Jetbrains suite, now we have working plugins for them: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... in addition of Emacs, Vim, Atom/Pulsar (very decent support), Jupyter notebooks, Sublime, Eclipse (simple support), Geany, enhanced terminal REPLs, Lem (multi-language editor built in CL)…

aidenn0 3y ago
> Geany I wrote that support mostly over a weekend, and judging by the lack of bug reports, either my code is flawless (doubtful) or nobody uses it.
reikonomusha 3y ago
People like to cite supposed VS Code support. I tried it. It's buggy and easy to make crash/spin/not respond/etc. even under casual use. Like... single Lisp file development. This is not to mention the absence of necessities such as correct indentation and paredit-like support. The latter we can get by without, but the former has worked in other editors for 30+ years. Don't get me wrong, it's a great start, and I hope it gets polished. But as of 3 months ago, it still doesn't work well, so much so I'd never actually recommend it seriously to someone who wants to learn Lisp. Have you tried using VS Code (or any other editor you mentioned) for any "serious" full-cycle Lisp development before, and do you believe it passes the minimum bar of stable and recommendable to another professional programmer or enthusiastic hobbyist? Do I need to try again?
- vindarel 3y ago
  +1. No, VS Code is an unusable resource hog for me, I don't think you would gain sthg in trying the plugin again, the last releases were not full of changes. Lem is remarkably featureful and usable for CL development though! Both its ncurses and SDL2 frontends. I only miss a couple keys from Slime: C-c C-y (print the function the cursor is on to the REPL), C-c ~ (sync the REPL with the current package (namespace)), then a better imenu, and that's it. Simple git support is available for power users too 8-)
  - reikonomusha 3y ago
    Lem is cool! But doesn't address what I consider a fundamental problem for Common Lisp adoption: lack of no-nonsense support for a familiar IDE. Lem feels like an Emacs, so the same people that won't use Emacs also won't use Lem... which is a lot of potential users.
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    Lem (and sbcl) is still broken on macOS Sonoma, sadly.
    - weikju 3y ago
      Broken how? I've had no issues with sbcl for quite a while.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
      I use sbcl on Sonoma every day
  - kagevf 3y ago
    C-c ~ isn't defined in any of my emacsen ... do you happen to know the command name it binds to? edit never mind ... it's bound when invoked from a .lisp source file ... very cool! I think I will use this a lot! Thank you for sharing it ...
jonathankoren 3y ago
I’ve tried SBCL in Atom/Pulsar and Emacs. I found the debugger confusing as hell. The whole thing felt super janky compared to a properly integrated debugger. What I want — what I really really want — is an Allegro CL experience. Unfortunately, nothing provides it, nor does it look like anyone has any interest in providing such an experience. This isn’t just a CL problem. Janky debugger integration is widespread. It’s the pathetic that only commercial developers provide a polished debugging experience. Everyone else is satisfied with a basically a CLI tool running separately in a window. That’s like. 80% solution. We can do better. We should do better.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  There is an exception to only commercial developers provide a polished debugging environment and that is the various non GNU open source Smalltalks. Eclipse can also produce reasonable debugging for Java at least. But yes other than that poor debuggers do limit the choice of languages. Unfortunately PHP is better served than most interesting languages.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Squeak is basically a port of the original Xerox PARC Smalltalk-80 image into a more portable implementation from Xerox folks themselves, Pharo was originally a Squeak fork. Eclipe was born as a rewrite from Visual Age for Smalltalk into Java. See the difference?
- fuzztester 3y ago
  interesting that you say this. have you also tried out Franz Lisp? it is another commercial one.
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Franz was too expensive :) Allegro had an academic license.
    - 3y ago

aidenn0 3y ago

> Geany I wrote that support mostly over a weekend, and judging by the lack of bug reports, either my code is flawless (doubtful) or nobody uses it.

reikonomusha 3y ago

People like to cite supposed VS Code support. I tried it. It's buggy and easy to make crash/spin/not respond/etc. even under casual use. Like... single Lisp file development. This is not to mention the absence of necessities such as correct indentation and paredit-like support. The latter we can get by without, but the former has worked in other editors for 30+ years. Don't get me wrong, it's a great start, and I hope it gets polished. But as of 3 months ago, it still doesn't work well, so much so I'd never actually recommend it seriously to someone who wants to learn Lisp. Have you tried using VS Code (or any other editor you mentioned) for any "serious" full-cycle Lisp development before, and do you believe it passes the minimum bar of stable and recommendable to another professional programmer or enthusiastic hobbyist? Do I need to try again?

vindarel 3y ago
+1. No, VS Code is an unusable resource hog for me, I don't think you would gain sthg in trying the plugin again, the last releases were not full of changes. Lem is remarkably featureful and usable for CL development though! Both its ncurses and SDL2 frontends. I only miss a couple keys from Slime: C-c C-y (print the function the cursor is on to the REPL), C-c ~ (sync the REPL with the current package (namespace)), then a better imenu, and that's it. Simple git support is available for power users too 8-)
- reikonomusha 3y ago
  Lem is cool! But doesn't address what I consider a fundamental problem for Common Lisp adoption: lack of no-nonsense support for a familiar IDE. Lem feels like an Emacs, so the same people that won't use Emacs also won't use Lem... which is a lot of potential users.
- rcarmo 3y ago
  Lem (and sbcl) is still broken on macOS Sonoma, sadly.
  - weikju 3y ago
    Broken how? I've had no issues with sbcl for quite a while.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
    I use sbcl on Sonoma every day
- kagevf 3y ago
  C-c ~ isn't defined in any of my emacsen ... do you happen to know the command name it binds to? edit never mind ... it's bound when invoked from a .lisp source file ... very cool! I think I will use this a lot! Thank you for sharing it ...

jonathankoren 3y ago

I’ve tried SBCL in Atom/Pulsar and Emacs. I found the debugger confusing as hell. The whole thing felt super janky compared to a properly integrated debugger. What I want — what I really really want — is an Allegro CL experience. Unfortunately, nothing provides it, nor does it look like anyone has any interest in providing such an experience. This isn’t just a CL problem. Janky debugger integration is widespread. It’s the pathetic that only commercial developers provide a polished debugging experience. Everyone else is satisfied with a basically a CLI tool running separately in a window. That’s like. 80% solution. We can do better. We should do better.

pasc1878 3y ago
There is an exception to only commercial developers provide a polished debugging environment and that is the various non GNU open source Smalltalks. Eclipse can also produce reasonable debugging for Java at least. But yes other than that poor debuggers do limit the choice of languages. Unfortunately PHP is better served than most interesting languages.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Squeak is basically a port of the original Xerox PARC Smalltalk-80 image into a more portable implementation from Xerox folks themselves, Pharo was originally a Squeak fork. Eclipe was born as a rewrite from Visual Age for Smalltalk into Java. See the difference?
fuzztester 3y ago
interesting that you say this. have you also tried out Franz Lisp? it is another commercial one.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Franz was too expensive :) Allegro had an academic license.
  - 3y ago