4 ms·

Yes, it is remarkably difficult to get into Common Lisp—or at least, it was until Practical Common Lisp (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys

by wtbob 12y ago

Yes, it is remarkably difficult to get into Common Lisp—or at least, it was until Practical Common Lisp (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/) came out, and it still is for topics PCL doesn't cover in-depth (e.g. CLOS). On Lisp is definitely not a good beginners' resource. It's a great book in many ways, but I would never recommend it over PCL. Lispers in general tend to have a fairly old-fashioned mentality (due, no doubt, to many of us being older) about many things. I think it's fair to say that there's much less of a sharing mindset, and much more of a closed mindset; the other way of wording that is that lispers are getting things done and making money doing them, not spending time updating community sites and sharing code (although there are some excellent open-source packages out there). I'd really like to figure out how to build more of a Common Lisp community. The more I use it, the more I realise that it's a solid, professional, well-thought-out language for developing solid, flexible, reliable software. It's not perfect, but much of what looks like warts at first are actually features. Using it is the closest thing to expressing my thoughts as code. It really is a joy.

eudox 12y ago
>I'd really like to figure out how to build more of a Common Lisp community. I think the low-hanging fruit is web design. Just touching up the CSS of library documentation would be very useful. Presentation is a lot more important than people think. For example, compare [0] to [1], or Crane's website[2] with, well, the average Common Lisp library. [0] http://eudoxia0.github.io/screamer/ http://eudoxia0.github.io/screamer/ [1] http://nikodemus.github.io/screamer/ http://nikodemus.github.io/screamer/ [2] http://eudoxia0.github.io/crane/ http://eudoxia0.github.io/crane/
- hajile 12y ago
  Check out quickdocs.org It's the best centralized source of CL docs I've seen and the design is fairly modern.
- lispm 12y ago
  [2] the boxes cut off the code on the right side...
- mrottenkolber 12y ago
  I find the screammer websites very nice (even though it wouldn't hurt to split off the manual/api to its own document). The crane website I find utterly horrible. Reminds me of the typical Node.js or Ruby websites and that makes me shiver. A software library is not a consumer product. Design for a lipstick brand can not be used for an airplane company. Software deserves a professional "no-bullshit" design. All three have a crucial mistake in common: Lines wider than 40em. A line must have between 8-12 words on avarage. And that is a typographic law, don't question it, we have known that since we wrote bibles. The thing with "modern" web design is: I rather have no CSS then BAD design. And fact is 99% of all web developers are not worth their salt. They completely ignore the lessons of hundreds of years of typography. My father is a designer and to my luck he taught me about typography. Everyone who touches a website should have read Jan Tschichold. There is no way around it, you will only repeat past mistakes.
  - bshimmin 12y ago
    I don't know if you're a Common Lisp guy, but comments like "99% of all web developers are not worth their salt" aren't really going to help your cause. If you personally dislike "the typical Node.js or Ruby" web sites, that's fine, but a lot of people who write software for the web these days clearly do like those sort of web sites and don't like an unformatted wall of text, even if the lines are a readable length. (I had a quick look at your site and was vastly disappointed to see that the lines were, indeed, 8-12 words on average, thus precluding my saying "Physician, heal thyself".)
    - mrottenkolber 12y ago
      I know it sounds harsh but fact is that today's web design ignores past science. Book design is a very well understood design problem which has its roots in ergonomics and not in graphic design. I don't mean to discredit the "99%"s graphic design skills, in fact I find many graphic design works on the web astonishing and have huge respect for graphic designers (because I really suck at it, but love it a lot). Their book design education appears to be underdeveloped though and for websites ergonomics are more important than graphic design. Thats just the way it is. Book design is an amazing field by the way. For latin characters it was pioneered by hand written bibles in the medival ages. I only know a few things about it, barely enough to see that its a dying art. :( Edit: Oh and you cannot "personaly dislike" a book design work. Its the only art I know which has definitive right or wrongs, black or whites, yes or nos. There is only one correct way to typeset any given text.
- rjsw 12y ago
  I find Nikodemus' original document easier to read than what you have done with it.

by wtbob 12y ago

eudox 12y ago

>I'd really like to figure out how to build more of a Common Lisp community. I think the low-hanging fruit is web design. Just touching up the CSS of library documentation would be very useful. Presentation is a lot more important than people think. For example, compare [0] to [1], or Crane's website[2] with, well, the average Common Lisp library. [0] http://eudoxia0.github.io/screamer/ http://eudoxia0.github.io/screamer/ [1] http://nikodemus.github.io/screamer/ http://nikodemus.github.io/screamer/ [2] http://eudoxia0.github.io/crane/ http://eudoxia0.github.io/crane/

hajile 12y ago
Check out quickdocs.org It's the best centralized source of CL docs I've seen and the design is fairly modern.
lispm 12y ago
[2] the boxes cut off the code on the right side...
mrottenkolber 12y ago
I find the screammer websites very nice (even though it wouldn't hurt to split off the manual/api to its own document). The crane website I find utterly horrible. Reminds me of the typical Node.js or Ruby websites and that makes me shiver. A software library is not a consumer product. Design for a lipstick brand can not be used for an airplane company. Software deserves a professional "no-bullshit" design. All three have a crucial mistake in common: Lines wider than 40em. A line must have between 8-12 words on avarage. And that is a typographic law, don't question it, we have known that since we wrote bibles. The thing with "modern" web design is: I rather have no CSS then BAD design. And fact is 99% of all web developers are not worth their salt. They completely ignore the lessons of hundreds of years of typography. My father is a designer and to my luck he taught me about typography. Everyone who touches a website should have read Jan Tschichold. There is no way around it, you will only repeat past mistakes.
- bshimmin 12y ago
  I don't know if you're a Common Lisp guy, but comments like "99% of all web developers are not worth their salt" aren't really going to help your cause. If you personally dislike "the typical Node.js or Ruby" web sites, that's fine, but a lot of people who write software for the web these days clearly do like those sort of web sites and don't like an unformatted wall of text, even if the lines are a readable length. (I had a quick look at your site and was vastly disappointed to see that the lines were, indeed, 8-12 words on average, thus precluding my saying "Physician, heal thyself".)
  - mrottenkolber 12y ago
    I know it sounds harsh but fact is that today's web design ignores past science. Book design is a very well understood design problem which has its roots in ergonomics and not in graphic design. I don't mean to discredit the "99%"s graphic design skills, in fact I find many graphic design works on the web astonishing and have huge respect for graphic designers (because I really suck at it, but love it a lot). Their book design education appears to be underdeveloped though and for websites ergonomics are more important than graphic design. Thats just the way it is. Book design is an amazing field by the way. For latin characters it was pioneered by hand written bibles in the medival ages. I only know a few things about it, barely enough to see that its a dying art. :( Edit: Oh and you cannot "personaly dislike" a book design work. Its the only art I know which has definitive right or wrongs, black or whites, yes or nos. There is only one correct way to typeset any given text.
rjsw 12y ago
I find Nikodemus' original document easier to read than what you have done with it.