5 ms·

Lisp Programming with Vim (2019)

94 points by susam 3y ago

dmwilcox 3y ago
I was going to say, in 2023 I looked around and for Clojure at least Conjure seemed like the best option. https://github.com/Olical/conjure/wiki/Client-features https://github.com/Olical/conjure/wiki/Client-features Unfortunately, in the table linked above the CL support in Conjure is so-so. I'm curious what people use for CL or if it's still slimv/vlime. I did a write up configuring Conjure with neovim here if that's something that's appealing: http://danielwilcox.uk/computers-log-0/ http://danielwilcox.uk/computers-log-0/
- Jach 3y ago
  We still use slimv/vlime. At the end of that page it says Conjure doesn't support debugging, this is rather crucial for Common Lisp. Is vim-fireplace dead for Clojure?
  - diggan 3y ago
    I don't think vim-fireplace is dead per se, but as a former vim-fireplace user, Conjure is just a lot nicer. It also helps that Conjure offers support for multiple languages, which enabled me to dabble with Fennel, Racket and Janet without having to install extra tooling.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Either LispWorks or Allegro Common Lisp, or eventually Emacs/Slime, anything else is going outside Common Lisp historical background and evolution. Clojure with Cursive, for a similar experience in Clojure. Or Raket if going down the Scheme route.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
roenxi 3y ago
Only tangentially related; but tree-sitter, lsp and friends are actually some of the most exciting developments for lisp programmers because we are finally seeing a model where Emacs and IDE support for lisp can properly decouple. One of the in-practice problems I've seen a lot of in Clojure is that people aren't sure how to get a REPL set up and all the local experts are using Emacs. Which is lovely but "you'll need to learn Emacs for me to be able to set you up!" is not exactly the battle cry of easy adoption.
- lispm 3y ago
  SLIME for Lisp exists since a long time. It has a server component. From what SLIME provides, one can see that the functionality used for interactive Lisp programming is different what one would use for many other languages. One is not communicating with a "language server", but with the live running application and its embedded development tools. For a Lisp programmer it is interesting where a CLASS is in the source code, but it is slighty more interesting to interact with the live class object (a metaclass object). CLOS (the Common Lisp Object System) was designed for interactive programming. That's also why it is said to be a 'system' and not only a language.
- dreamcompiler 3y ago
  I've pretty much ignored tree-sitter because Lisp is so easy to parse anyway. Does tree-sitter add value for Lisp parsing? Apologies; I really am coming from under a rock here.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    Parsing to execute is easy. Real time parsing to do syntax highlighting and indenting less so. By convention people often implement some forms differently than others. It isn't a crazy challenge, but the bar is higher than counting parens. And obviously Emacs doesn't do this correctly because it dies if someone throws a long line at it (the usual implementation of syntax highlighter is apparently regexp soup).
- adityaathalye 3y ago
  Apropos treesitter, lsp and friends, I have based my baseline Emacs programming experience [1] on these. Quite enjoyable! Apropos Clojure IDEs, m'colleagues and I in my neck of the Emacs-using Clojurist woods tend to send newcomers to VSCode or IntelliJ [2]. As community surveys show over the years, these two have come to own big chunks of the Clojure IDE pie. Well-earned, because both have received excellent Clojure programming support, with smooth REPL integration. It seems Zed could become a contender too. A long time Clojure programmer friend and die-hard Emacs user recently remarked how Zed's performance might win him over. [1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/emerging-from-dotemacs-bankruptcy-ide-experience/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/emerging-from-dotemacs-bankr... [2] https://github.com/inclojure-org/clojure-by-example?tab=readme-ov-file#setup-instructions https://github.com/inclojure-org/clojure-by-example?tab=read... and https://github.com/inclojure-org/intermediate-clojure-workshop?tab=readme-ov-file#setup-instructions https://github.com/inclojure-org/intermediate-clojure-worksh...
cassepipe 3y ago
I love the level of details of this write-up. It assumes nothing and tries really hard to avoid you any papercuts. I wish I had found when I tried to learn Lisp. Between learning the language and all the papercuts I just gave up like I did for so many other niche things that caught my interest.
kazinator 3y ago
I've written all my Lisp in Vim for the past quarter century. Nowadays I'm experimenting with parinfer in Vim. It's quirky. First off, it doesn't work well with the lisp mode autonindenting, so that has to be turned off. It doesn't handle some syntax like #; to comment out an object. I rigged Ctrl-_ to toggle parinfer on and off.
- kazinator 3y ago
  More about the indenting. If you're in :set lisp mode, and you have this, say: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux)))_ ;; <-- cursor here If you hit Enter for a new line, it will do this: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux))) _ ;; <-- cursor here In parinfer mode, though, that is counterproductive, because you control structure through indentation. Say you want to add a fallback (t 42) case to the cond. You just want dumb indentation that is not Lisp aware and which just copies the indentation of the previous line: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux))) _ ;; <-- cursor here Whereby parindent will instantly move the parentheses: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux) )) So I have it that when parinfer mode turns on, :set nolisp is executed, and vice versa, when parinfer is off, :set lisp goes on.
vindarel 3y ago
and obligatory link for more editors ;) https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (Emacs, Atom/Pulsar (very good support), Jetbrains, Sublime, VSCode (less good support yet), Jupyter kernel, standalone general-purpose Lem editor…)

94 points by susam 3y ago

I was going to say, in 2023 I looked around and for Clojure at least Conjure seemed like the best option. https://github.com/Olical/conjure/wiki/Client-features https://github.com/Olical/conjure/wiki/Client-features Unfortunately, in the table linked above the CL support in Conjure is so-so. I'm curious what people use for CL or if it's still slimv/vlime. I did a write up configuring Conjure with neovim here if that's something that's appealing: http://danielwilcox.uk/computers-log-0/ http://danielwilcox.uk/computers-log-0/

Jach 3y ago
We still use slimv/vlime. At the end of that page it says Conjure doesn't support debugging, this is rather crucial for Common Lisp. Is vim-fireplace dead for Clojure?
- diggan 3y ago
  I don't think vim-fireplace is dead per se, but as a former vim-fireplace user, Conjure is just a lot nicer. It also helps that Conjure offers support for multiple languages, which enabled me to dabble with Fennel, Racket and Janet without having to install extra tooling.
pjmlp 3y ago
Either LispWorks or Allegro Common Lisp, or eventually Emacs/Slime, anything else is going outside Common Lisp historical background and evolution. Clojure with Cursive, for a similar experience in Clojure. Or Raket if going down the Scheme route.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

roenxi 3y ago

Only tangentially related; but tree-sitter, lsp and friends are actually some of the most exciting developments for lisp programmers because we are finally seeing a model where Emacs and IDE support for lisp can properly decouple. One of the in-practice problems I've seen a lot of in Clojure is that people aren't sure how to get a REPL set up and all the local experts are using Emacs. Which is lovely but "you'll need to learn Emacs for me to be able to set you up!" is not exactly the battle cry of easy adoption.

lispm 3y ago
SLIME for Lisp exists since a long time. It has a server component. From what SLIME provides, one can see that the functionality used for interactive Lisp programming is different what one would use for many other languages. One is not communicating with a "language server", but with the live running application and its embedded development tools. For a Lisp programmer it is interesting where a CLASS is in the source code, but it is slighty more interesting to interact with the live class object (a metaclass object). CLOS (the Common Lisp Object System) was designed for interactive programming. That's also why it is said to be a 'system' and not only a language.
dreamcompiler 3y ago
I've pretty much ignored tree-sitter because Lisp is so easy to parse anyway. Does tree-sitter add value for Lisp parsing? Apologies; I really am coming from under a rock here.
- roenxi 3y ago
  Parsing to execute is easy. Real time parsing to do syntax highlighting and indenting less so. By convention people often implement some forms differently than others. It isn't a crazy challenge, but the bar is higher than counting parens. And obviously Emacs doesn't do this correctly because it dies if someone throws a long line at it (the usual implementation of syntax highlighter is apparently regexp soup).
adityaathalye 3y ago
Apropos treesitter, lsp and friends, I have based my baseline Emacs programming experience [1] on these. Quite enjoyable! Apropos Clojure IDEs, m'colleagues and I in my neck of the Emacs-using Clojurist woods tend to send newcomers to VSCode or IntelliJ [2]. As community surveys show over the years, these two have come to own big chunks of the Clojure IDE pie. Well-earned, because both have received excellent Clojure programming support, with smooth REPL integration. It seems Zed could become a contender too. A long time Clojure programmer friend and die-hard Emacs user recently remarked how Zed's performance might win him over. [1] https://www.evalapply.org/posts/emerging-from-dotemacs-bankruptcy-ide-experience/ https://www.evalapply.org/posts/emerging-from-dotemacs-bankr... [2] https://github.com/inclojure-org/clojure-by-example?tab=readme-ov-file#setup-instructions https://github.com/inclojure-org/clojure-by-example?tab=read... and https://github.com/inclojure-org/intermediate-clojure-workshop?tab=readme-ov-file#setup-instructions https://github.com/inclojure-org/intermediate-clojure-worksh...

cassepipe 3y ago

I love the level of details of this write-up. It assumes nothing and tries really hard to avoid you any papercuts. I wish I had found when I tried to learn Lisp. Between learning the language and all the papercuts I just gave up like I did for so many other niche things that caught my interest.

kazinator 3y ago

I've written all my Lisp in Vim for the past quarter century. Nowadays I'm experimenting with parinfer in Vim. It's quirky. First off, it doesn't work well with the lisp mode autonindenting, so that has to be turned off. It doesn't handle some syntax like #; to comment out an object. I rigged Ctrl-_ to toggle parinfer on and off.

kazinator 3y ago
More about the indenting. If you're in :set lisp mode, and you have this, say: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux)))_ ;; <-- cursor here If you hit Enter for a new line, it will do this: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux))) _ ;; <-- cursor here In parinfer mode, though, that is counterproductive, because you control structure through indentation. Say you want to add a fallback (t 42) case to the cond. You just want dumb indentation that is not Lisp aware and which just copies the indentation of the previous line: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux))) _ ;; <-- cursor here Whereby parindent will instantly move the parentheses: (progn (cond (foo bar) (xyzzy quux) )) So I have it that when parinfer mode turns on, :set nolisp is executed, and vice versa, when parinfer is off, :set lisp goes on.

vindarel 3y ago

and obligatory link for more editors ;) https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (Emacs, Atom/Pulsar (very good support), Jetbrains, Sublime, VSCode (less good support yet), Jupyter kernel, standalone general-purpose Lem editor…)