[HN Gopher] Everything Picolisp can do, and more
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       Everything Picolisp can do, and more
        
       Author : damir
       Score  : 98 points
       Date   : 2025-03-16 19:49 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (picolisp.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (picolisp.com)
        
       | tony-allan wrote:
       | I initially confused this with Lisp for microcontrollers [1]
       | 
       | [1] http://www.ulisp.com/show?3J
        
         | EncomLab wrote:
         | uLisp is amazing - capable of leveraging a lot of work in a
         | small package.
        
       | agumonkey wrote:
       | Gotta admit, the author has a nice sense of eDSL
       | https://picolisp.com/wiki/?taskDB
        
       | actionfromafar wrote:
       | PicoLisp is like an ancient technology or species which somehow
       | survived to this day. It always felt to me like on the cusp to
       | mainstream acceptance.
        
         | BoingBoomTschak wrote:
         | "No arrays nor floating point numbers" and "mainstream
         | acceptance" don't live in the same world, in my eyes.
         | 
         | Fexprs are cool, though.
        
           | actionfromafar wrote:
           | Agreed, at least on the floats. I used PicoLisp in the past
           | some, but I had to call C functions for floats.
        
           | jdougan wrote:
           | Fexprs are very cool. RIP John Shutt
        
       | Regenaxer wrote:
       | No floats, yes, but it has fixnums with infinite precision
        
         | Paul-Craft wrote:
         | Nitpick: they're actually _arbitrary_ precision. There 's no
         | such thing as "infinite" precision on a real machine. This does
         | actually matter on occasion.
        
       | mijoharas wrote:
       | So, one thing I'm not seeing obviously in this list of articles
       | (which seem great in general!) is an explanation of how picolisp
       | contrasts to other lisps? Something explaining why I might reach
       | for picolisp instead of, say, scheme or common lisp?
       | 
       | Can anyone share something showing that, or explaining a little
       | bit more about picolisp for someone unfamiliar with it? (I
       | thought the pros/cons list on the page might describe it a little
       | more, but it didn't make things immediately clear to me).
        
         | lithos wrote:
         | Yeah LISP has major issues of "that's neat, what happens when
         | you try IO". Anything from drawing on the screen, connecting to
         | a socket, or even nonterminal keyboard input ends up being such
         | a pain.
        
           | anonzzzies wrote:
           | Not talking about pico as i don't have experience with it,
           | but not sure what you mean in relation to something like
           | common lisp or racket? Those things you mention are trivial
           | in both. I know racket is more scheme than lisp.
        
       | Archit3ch wrote:
       | I love it, but no floats is a practical limitation.
        
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       (page generated 2025-03-17 23:02 UTC)