Hello from a newLISP newbie who's found the holy grail

camperman · Post by **camperman** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 8:00 am

Hi all,

I've been getting thoroughly depressed since discovering Lisp through Paul Graham's essays two years ago and then bumping my head against every single issue that Steve Yegge mentions in his essay here http://tinyurl.com/g95n9. It has been mortifying to read through say, Norvig and see the sheer power of CL in action and then waste hours and hours getting simple libraries to work with any of the implementations I tried.

newLISP Just Worked. Out of the box. First time. Linux, Windows, MacOS, it's embeddable, it's clean. It's Lisp for the real world in 2006 and I just wanted to say thanks for er, putting the fun back into Lisp. You guys should make that your motto - oh wait, you already have :)

cormullion · Post by **cormullion** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 10:17 am

That's a great first post, so welcome from another (perpetual?) newbie!

Just to satisfy my curiosity - where/how did you find newLISP?

camperman · Post by **camperman** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:35 pm

Thanks! I have a couple of cross-platform game projects in the pipeline: one needs to be scripted in Lisp and the other will probably (now) be written in newLISP calling the SDL and OpenGL shared libraries.

I just googled for "lisp small linux win32 macosx scripting" and the newLISP home page came up first. Bingo. I don't know why I didn't notice it before - I've been looking around for about six months for something suitable.

Lutz · Post by **Lutz** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 3:09 pm

Welcome to the group camperman!

you probably discovered already Pjot's website, where you can find a lot of openGL and SDL code. I case you have not, here are some links:

OpnGL: http://www.turtle.dds.nl/gl4newlisp/index.html

SDL: http://www.turtle.dds.nl/newlisp/SDL.lsp

Lutz

camperman · Post by **camperman** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 7:43 pm

Thank you Lutz - and thanks very much for the links. I'm a bit confused though. Apparently all I have to do is:

(load "GL.lsp")

and then call the function like:

(GL:glBegin ...)

Is that all? No fighting with ASDF? No random segfaults? No different behaviour between Linux and Win32? No compile errors? No insults from #lisp?

newLISP certainly has a long way to go before it matches the CL experience - hehehe. </sarcasm>

pjot · Post by **pjot** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 11:39 pm

Howdy camperman!

Welcome to newLISP, the best programming language on earth. :-)

Indeed a (load "GL.lsp") is all. Please let me know if you run into trouble, I am happy to help out.

The GLU context could be rewritten in newLISP completely, by the way. I already rewrote the GluLookat function, but the whole GLU API should be translated. In this way, newLISP will only depend on 1 shared object/DLL. Also some float/double mixups can be avoided. So if you have some sparetime, and need some exercise... ;-)

Anyway, if you plan to use the GL stuff, do not hesitate to let me know any issue you may encounter.

Peter

William James · Post by **William James** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 8:33 am

That the newLISP executable is so small in size is one thing that impresses me. On my computer, Brian Kernighan's awk is 167,936 bytes; newLISP isn't much larger at 175,616 bytes, but it has an enormous list of features that awk lacks.

Common Lisp seems too complex---and its users seem too arrogant. Example: recently on comp.lang.lisp when a newbie said that the code provided for him by a guru crashed on his computer, the guru posted some new code that would have deleted every file on the newbie's hard-drive if he had run it. Another guru, instead of being shocked, merely stated that the first guru had perhaps gone a bit too far.

camperman · Post by **camperman** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:47 am

pjot wrote:Howdy camperman!

Welcome to newLISP, the best programming language on earth. :-)

Indeed a (load "GL.lsp") is all. Please let me know if you run into trouble, I am happy to help out.

Thanks Peter. No problems so far running the demos on your page.

The GLU context could be rewritten in newLISP completely, by the way. I already rewrote the GluLookat function, but the whole GLU API should be translated. In this way, newLISP will only depend on 1 shared object/DLL. Also some float/double mixups can be avoided. So if you have some sparetime, and need some exercise... ;-)

I'll be happy to help once I know enough - I'm not there yet though. Still trying to get newlisp.vim to look pretty...

m i c h a e l · Post by **m i c h a e l** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 12:27 pm

William wrote:Common Lisp seems too complex---and its users seem too arrogant. Example: recently on comp.lang.lisp when a newbie said that the code provided for him by a guru crashed on his computer, the guru posted some new code that would have deleted every file on the newbie's hard-drive if he had run it. Another guru, instead of being shocked, merely stated that the first guru had perhaps gone a bit too far.

I saw the same exchange by following a link there from reddit titled:

foobarbaz, on reddit wrote:Why is Lisp unpopular? Maybe it's a "community" like this. (Read first 10 posts to see what's happening.)

Maybe there is a connection between the complexity of a language and the arrogance of its users. Consider the differences between the (typical) users of these two groups of languages:

Group (a)
C++
Ada
Common Lisp
Haskell (monads)
Eiffel
Perl

Group (b)
Smalltalk
BASIC
Ruby
Scheme
Lua
newLISP

One way to look at it would be to ask yourself which group you would choose if you were forced to live with them, for an extended time, in a small space. Coming soon, the new reality show: "Hacker Home"!

m i c h a e l

camperman · Post by **camperman** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:35 pm

I saw the same exchange by following a link there from reddit titled:

foobarbaz, on reddit wrote:Why is Lisp unpopular? Maybe it's a
"community" like this. (Read first 10 posts to see what's happening.)

Good grief. Newbie asks beginner question and gets trojan in response! Mind you, that just about sums up c.l.l for me. I won't miss it.

Group (b)
Smalltalk
BASIC
Ruby
Scheme
Lua
newLISP

You can add Python to Group (b) - laid-back, friendly and helpful community.

m i c h a e l · Post by **m i c h a e l** » Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:50 pm

camperman wrote:You can add Python to Group (b) - laid-back, friendly and helpful community.

Agreed. I was a wallflower within the Python community before becoming a Ruby wallflower. Both Python and Ruby have very enjoyable music, and those who play those languages are helpful and friendly. But now that I've heard newLISP's tune, I've decided to get off the wall and start dancing!

Wait! I feel another motto coming on: "Have you heard? There's a newLISP in town." Better add that to 101 mottos ;-)

m i c h a e l

aron · Post by **aron** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:42 am

Aaa, I can't choose between those groups need one of my own. Of course I want to add some of those funny stuff I haven’t tested jet to.

Group C:
C++
Ada
Common Lisp
Scheme
newLISP

Maybe it’s me or my university which is a little weird, who knows.

m i c h a e l · Post by **m i c h a e l** » Thu Jun 15, 2006 6:12 pm

aron wrote:Aaa, I can't choose between those groups need one of my own.

The two lists were only intended as examples of complex and simple languages that have a noticeable effect on their users. You're certainly welcome to contribute your list of favorite languages, though :-)

m i c h a e l