Re: [pro] Learning Lisp the Bump Free Way
Quoting Vladimir Sedach <vsedach@gmail.com>:
2. There are no libraries to do <X>/I can't find any libraries.
It may sound shocking, but there's non-programmers out there who complain if there isn't a free-as-in-beer application to do what they want. This argument is the programmer corollary. It always appears to me as though the real argument is "No one else has already done my work for me." But then, when I first learned C, we got stdio and stdlib, and nothing else, really, so my view may be skewed. I do find discussions that pit the syntaxes of Lisp vs. other languages very amusing, and not for the reason most Lisp users might. Yes, many new languages have long drawn out discussions about how their syntax should change, while Lisp has had the same syntax for a very long time. But here's where libraries come in... It seems like an awful lot of Lisp libraries exist to wank about with the language than libraries in other languages, rather than to actually do the sort of tasks that programmers look to do. This may make it look like Lisp is defective. After all, if you need a bunch of libraries to 'correct' the language, it can't be any good, right? And because there seems to be several libraries to 'correct' the same problem in different ways, it's pretty obvious that the 'community' can't even agree on how to do it. In some people's minds, this is a problem. (And yes, I know that it's a rather superficial view, but from someone casually considering Lisp, a superficial view is all you're going to get). Neil Gilmore raito@raito.com
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at. To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?) - nick
On 21 Jan 2011, at 20:34, Nick Levine wrote:
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at.
To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?)
We're getting there. See http://www.quicklisp.org/ Especially, see http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel Software Languages Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
We're getting there. See http://www.quicklisp.org/ Especially, see http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html It doesn't say what any one of them do. There's no way (am I right?) to look up form what I want to do to what exists to do it. - n
Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> writes:
We're getting there. See http://www.quicklisp.org/
Especially, see http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html
It doesn't say what any one of them do. There's no way (am I right?) to look up form what I want to do to what exists to do it.
Very true, and something I'd like to add. Right now it's mostly useful for the "I already know I want Hunchentoot, but what a pain to get all the dependencies" group. I need to make it more useful to the "I want to make a website, but what a pain to figure out where to start" group. Zach
I have been a beginner lisp developer for years largely because the is just a large problem with answering the question "I want to make a website, but what a pain to figure out where to start", I want to X. I would be down to contribute. This lisp learning curve is large, and figuring out the exact resources that are available is harder. Especially because it's hard to tell from the outside what is being maintained and up todate, and what works on which cl distribution. This sounds like some thing that can be added to http://common-lisp.net/ or http://www.cliki.net/ On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 12:02 PM, Zach Beane <xach@xach.com> wrote:
Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> writes:
We're getting there. See http://www.quicklisp.org/
Especially, see http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html
It doesn't say what any one of them do. There's no way (am I right?) to look up form what I want to do to what exists to do it.
Very true, and something I'd like to add.
Right now it's mostly useful for the "I already know I want Hunchentoot, but what a pain to get all the dependencies" group. I need to make it more useful to the "I want to make a website, but what a pain to figure out where to start" group.
Zach
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Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> writes:
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at.
To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?)
It's getting better with Quicklisp (I get frequent emails from people who write to say "I am getting back into Lisp because of this!") but there's still a long way to go. Things are improving, little by little. Zach
Not to sound like I'm complaining (quicklisp is awesome btw), but if http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html had descriptions of what the packages actually did (or links to their respective homepage, or docstrings, or something), that would be wonderful. On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 2:47 PM, Zach Beane <xach@xach.com> wrote:
Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> writes:
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at.
To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?)
It's getting better with Quicklisp (I get frequent emails from people who write to say "I am getting back into Lisp because of this!") but there's still a long way to go. Things are improving, little by little.
Zach
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"Drew Csillag (sounds like cheese-log)" <dcsillag@google.com> writes:
Not to sound like I'm complaining (quicklisp is awesome btw), but if http:// www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html had descriptions of what the packages actually did (or links to their respective homepage, or docstrings, or something), that would be wonderful.
That's one of the reasons why it's still in beta. I need to gather useful, descriptive info about each project and make it easily available. Zach
On 21 Jan 2011, at 21:00, Zach Beane wrote:
"Drew Csillag (sounds like cheese-log)" <dcsillag@google.com> writes:
Not to sound like I'm complaining (quicklisp is awesome btw), but if http:// www.quicklisp.org/beta/releases.html had descriptions of what the packages actually did (or links to their respective homepage, or docstrings, or something), that would be wonderful.
That's one of the reasons why it's still in beta. I need to gather useful, descriptive info about each project and make it easily available.
What would you recommend to the library providers to make this job easier for you? Could we maybe add tags to ASDF defsystem forms that you could parse, or something along these lines? Pascal -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel Software Languages Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium
Pascal Costanza wrote:
On 21 Jan 2011, at 21:00, Zach Beane wrote:
That's one of the reasons why it's still in beta. I need to gather useful, descriptive info about each project and make it easily available.
What would you recommend to the library providers to make this job easier for you? Could we maybe add tags to ASDF defsystem forms that you could parse, or something along these lines?
At least for human-readable descriptions, people should make the effort to provide nice :long-description fields in their ASDF systems. -- Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated. Scientific site: http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier Music (Jazz) site: http://www.didierverna.com
Using (string-count-str (get-url-as-string "http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html") "#module") I show that there are 291 projects listed on that python page. But (string-count-str (get-url-as-string ""http://common-lisp.net/projects.shtml") "/project/") tells me that there are 416 projects listed on http://common-lisp.net/projects.shtml And I don't have to scrape the Common Lisp Directory ( http://www.cl-user.net/asp/root-dir ), it lists 641 entries in Libraries/Tools/Software. So, yes, it would appear that the Python people are rather library starved compared to us Common Lisp users. I can definitely see why people would get frustrated using Python and be flocking to Lisp. ;-) Chris On 1/21/11 11:34 AM, Nick Levine wrote:
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at.
To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?)
- nick
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On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 8:34 PM, Nick Levine <ndl@ravenbrook.com> wrote:
I can't find any libraries.
I think this is one of the most serious issues which is blocking the growth of lisp use. Speaking as someone who recently gave up trying to write a book on how to use CL's libraries: locating them and knowing in advance of downloading them what their purpose is are major problems and not to be sniffed at.
To see what I mean, go to http://docs.python.org/py3k/modindex.html and click on some stuff at random. What CL has to offer should be as good as this. For all I know, maybe it is that good, but the information isn't there. How would I know? (Or am I behind the times and this has been fixed now?)
Just a dumb example, I don't want to put up any Lisp vs Python war or anything, but in the Python list you posted, I see only one mention of "user interface". A common complaint against Lisp is that it has no GUI libraries. It's just one data point that means almost nothing, but my feeling is that people have much higher expectations from Lisp than from other comparable languages. Lisp just cannot be like Java or C# without an Oracle or a Microsoft paying the cost. That's why many languages, Lisp and Python included, end up having an implementation on the JVM and/or the CLR.
People are beginning to complain that the pro@ list is becoming similar to comp.lang.lisp, and there also have been several unsubscriptions today and yesterday. Can this topic please be put to a rest or taken where it belongs? Thanks, Hans
participants (10)
-
Alessio Stalla -
Chris Perkins -
Didier Verna -
Drew Csillag (sounds like cheese-log) -
Hans Hübner -
Nick Levine -
Pascal Costanza -
raito＠raito.com -
Steve Morin -
Zach Beane