Jim Newton schrieb:
If there are non-lispers invited then perhaps it might be nice to have an ongoing series of lectures (half hour plus questions) about cool lisp features or maybe Lisp for Dummies. This could also be useful for lisp beginners as well.
Some examples.
- How to use CLOS.
- Methods before, after, around
- Lexical vs dynamic scoping
- Lexical closures, and higher order functions
- Looping, iteration, and recursion
- Implementing common data structues, queues, sets, tree, etc.
- Installing LISP on your computer, which implementation, which architecture, which version?
- Macros, why do we need them, what can we do with them?
- Comparing common patterns in Perl, Python, Java, C, and LISP
Is anyone interested in seeing any of these or other item presented? Does anyone volunteer to present such a topic for this meeting or an upcoming one?
I personally would be interested in seeing how other people use the lisp package system plus defsystem3, defsystem4 or asdf. Which naming schemes do people use to name their packages? Do people set-up and use the lisp logical pathnames like with defsystem3? What about the old (require ...) and (provide ...) forms?
I also would be interested in seeing how people use the lisp conditions system to deal with errors.
Besides that I think one of the biggest obstacles for newbies is to get going with lisp. This does not only mean how to install a lisp system but also how to set-up a work environment like emacs plus ilisp and how to solve little simple problems from scratch. Or even how to create simple standalone executables.
Every programming language depends heavily on its documentation. Therefore it might be a good idea aswell to show people the available documentation resources like cltl2 or the ansi standard plus additional online available material.