[HN Gopher] A Road to Common Lisp (2018)
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       A Road to Common Lisp (2018)
        
       Author : jsfcoding
       Score  : 62 points
       Date   : 2022-06-06 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stevelosh.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stevelosh.com)
        
       | worder0 wrote:
       | Has anyone used the "Land of Lisp" book, or Exercism.org to learn
       | Common Lisp? Any other fun alternatives for learning lisp?
        
         | nanna wrote:
         | I've tried a few different books, including Land of Lisp, PCL,
         | SICP, Chassel's Introduction to Emacs Lisp, but what I'd
         | recommend head over shoulders above them all is buying a copy
         | of Touretzky's Common Lisp: A Gentle introduction to Symbolic
         | Computation. It's wonderfully thought through, really helped me
         | finally grok elementary stuff like what a cons cell is, exactly
         | how apostrophes function, what asymbol is, and a lot more. It's
         | not meant to be comprehensive, it completely leaves aside CLOS,
         | but it's left me with a damn solid foundation for working with
         | Lisp.
        
       | vindarel wrote:
       | It's a great article. Since then, we have more tools and
       | resources so we can enhance it:
       | 
       | ## Pick and Editor
       | 
       | The article is right that you can start with anything. Just
       | `load` your .lisp file in the REPL. But even in Vim, Sublime
       | Text, and Atom [and also VSCode] you can get pretty good to very
       | good support. See https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-
       | cookbook/editor-support.ht... (also Lem, a CL editor that works
       | for other languages, Jupyter notebooks, Eclipse (basic support)
       | and LispWorks (proprietary, advanced graphical tools).
       | 
       | > if anyone is interested in making a Common Lisp LSP language
       | server, I think it would be a hugely useful contribution to the
       | community.
       | 
       | Here's a new project used for VSCode: https://github.com/nobody-
       | famous/alive-lsp There's also https://github.com/cxxxr/cl-lsp
       | 
       | ## Other resources
       | 
       | I already linked to it, but the Cookbook (to which I contribute)
       | is a useful reference to see code and get things done, quickly.
       | https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/
       | 
       | While I'm at it, my first shameless plug: after my tutorials
       | written for the Cookbook and my blog, I wanted to do more.
       | Explain, structure, demo real-world Common Lisp. I'm creating
       | this course (there are some free videos):
       | https://www.udemy.com/course/common-lisp-programming/?coupon...
       | (ongoing -50% coupon for June).
       | 
       | ## Web Development
       | 
       | See the Cookbook, and the awesome list (see below). We have many
       | libraries, you still have to code for things taken for granted in
       | other big frameworks. I have some articles on my blog.
       | 
       | We have new very cool kids in town, especially CLOG, that is like
       | a GUI for the browser. Check it out:
       | https://github.com/rabbibotton/clog
       | 
       | ## Game Development
       | 
       | See again the awesome-cl list. And the Kandria game, in the
       | making, all done in CL: https://kandria.com/ (it just got
       | accepted for a Swiss grant, congratulations).
       | 
       | ## Unit Testing
       | 
       | We have even more test frameworks since 2018! And some are
       | actually good O_o
       | 
       | ## Projects
       | 
       | To create a full-featured CL project in one command, look no
       | further, here's my (shameless plug again) project skeleton:
       | https://github.com/vindarel/cl-cookieproject you'll find the
       | equivalent for a web project, lighter alternatives in the README,
       | and a demo video:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFc513MJjos&feature=youtu.be
       | 
       | ## Libraries
       | 
       | He doesn't mention this list, what a shame:
       | https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl => the CL ecosystem is
       | probably bigger than you thought. Sincerely, only recently, great
       | packages appeared: CLOG, cl-gserver (actors concurrency), 40ants-
       | doc, official CL support on OVH through Platform.sh, great editor
       | add-ons (Slite test runner, Slime-star modules...), Coalton 1.0
       | (Haskell-like ML on top of CL), April v1.0 (APL in CL), a Qt 5
       | "library" (still hard to install), many more... (Clingon CLI args
       | parser, Lish, a Lisp Shell in the making, the Consfigurator
       | deployment service, generic-cl)...
       | 
       | His list is OK, I'd pick another HTTP client and another JSON
       | library (new ones since 2018 too), but that's a detail.
       | 
       | BTW, see also a list of companies:
       | https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/
       | 
       | ## Community
       | 
       | We are also on Discord: https://discord.gg/hhk46CE and on Libera
       | Chat.
       | 
       | ## Implementations
       | 
       | CLASP (CL for C++ on LLVM) reached its v1.0, congrats.
       | https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp/releases/tag/1.0.0 More
       | are in the making...
       | 
       | We got dynamic library delivery tool for SBCL (sbcl-librarian),
       | more good stuff is coming...
       | 
       | Allegro CL (proprietary) got a new version running in the
       | browser...
       | 
       | Crazy Lisp world <3
        
       | gjvc wrote:
       | Steve Losh is a great writer.
        
       | the-alchemist wrote:
       | I was exposed to Common Lisp in college in a "Programming
       | Language Concepts" class, almost 20 years ago, and it didn't
       | "click". I got no help or assistance or explanation, and this was
       | pre-youtube and Google so it was hard to find an answer to "why
       | is this happening?"
       | 
       | But I gave Clojure a try despite the bad taste in my mouth Common
       | Lisp left, and it was def worth it.
       | 
       | To try it out real quick: https://tryclojure.org/
        
         | gleenn wrote:
         | I also remember learning Scheme and having it be a real mind
         | bender. Scheme/Racket is great, but I think Clojure being more
         | opinionated and being immutable by default is a huge
         | improvement in terms of understanding larger projects. Also,
         | their parallel computation and mutex constructs are some of the
         | easiest to understand AND easiest to guarantee you did it
         | right. This is going to continue becoming more and more
         | important given the huge rise in CPU core counts both on
         | desktops and in servers.
        
       | jonjacky wrote:
       | Previously, 92 comments:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17852194
       | 
       | One comment there said, "This is a godsend. Probably the best
       | introductory article on Lisp to date."
        
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