cffi VS cl-cookbook

When you want to do anything that breaks the nice bubble of your Lisp image, you might want to know a bit about your operating system's programming interface. This will come in handy if you ever need to wrap a library with CFFI. There are some things that are pretty inconvenient as a rule (like dealing with any protocol that uses network byte order), but if you stay within the bubble of your Lisp image, you won't really notice them.

I'm just posting the work that I have done over the last year or so on CL-Objc. I'm still blocked from better support (e.g., passing structs by value for frameworks like UIKit). I just wanted to post what I have done online for others interested in the work or motivated to collaborate on this.

Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I have been waiting on some feedback for PR in CFFI. This feature is blocking me from reviving CL-OBJC. Any help will be appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Is that actually https://github.com/cffi/cffi/commit/33970351e71bb5f12ba56fc40270089e948ae112 ? I.e. after loading cl+ssl. (Although Hunchentoot does not interrupt threads)

Maybe access the pins using CFFI, https://github.com/cffi/cffi package and one the libraries mentioned here? https://www.bigmessowires.com/2018/05/26/raspberry-pi-gpio-programming-in-c/

FTR, on my system QL fetches CFFI 0.23.0 and the fix/error I'm talking about is https://github.com/cffi/cffi/blob/master/src/libraries.lisp#L106 and seems to have been added iin this PR https://github.com/cffi/cffi/pull/173/commits/263b38f4f2600dbacde8f2b313620c35a563c6df so the fix should be in CFFI 0.24.0 released 24 March 2021.

FTR: this is the PR https://github.com/cffi/cffi/pull/173/commits/263b38f4f2600dbacde8f2b313620c35a563c6df

C: Alternatively (more difficult) you could try to wrap the underlying C layers of either of those mentioned under Python with CFFI. The C-based game engine, Raylib, is also wrappable this way. I finished a super cool walking simulator in CL with that, but it is more tedious than the others since raylib is really barebones.

I feel inspired to start Lisp after being disappointed with the "open" source scene of 2021. I'd rather pay LispWorks a yearly fee and be left alone than dealing with unbalanced people in the Python space. The free Lisp implementations also look somewhat isolated from the ideological wars.

However, a C interface is required. Is this one the recommended solution? Is it really portable?

https://common-lisp.net/project/cffi/

What is the speed compared to a Python C extension? Are implementation-specific C interfaces faster (I guess they are)?

Sorry for so many questions, but these can usually only be answered by people who have actually used the interface.

> the problem with Lisp is that it's sorta bundled with Emacs

What's the problems with Alive, SLT, Slyblime, and Vlime? I mean, I use Emacs, but I was using Emacs before getting into Scheme and CL anyway.

> Every website that teaches Lisp is in ugly HTML+CSS-only style

I dunno, I feel like the Community Spec (<https://cl-community-spec.github.io/pages/index.html>) and the Cookbook (<https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/>) are fine.

> I like the philosophy of (s-exp) but modern lisps have ruined its simplicity for me by introducing additional bracket notations [like this].

Yes, that additional notation is a terrible blight on the perfection that is S-expressions, I wholeheartedly agree.

check out the editor section, there's more than Emacs these days: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht...

- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl for libraries

- https://www.classcentral.com/report/best-lisp-courses/#ancho...

- a recent overview of the ecosystem: https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/these-years-in-common-li... (shameless plug, on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321090)

Q4: the Cookbook should get you straight to the point: build a website, web scraper, DB access, reference of data structures… https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

It's a good book!

Modern companions would be:

- the Cookbook: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ (check out the editors section: Atom/Pulsar, VSCode, Sublime, Jetbrains, Lem...)

- https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl to find libraries

Also:

- https://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34321090 2022 in review

https://leanpub.com/lovinglisp -- this one is great, and the first thing I recommend

https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ -- also great and up to date

https://awesome-cl.com/ -- for anything else.

Little help to boost your videos: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ look at the banner. Cheers.

For more beginner-friendly, I suggest P. Siebels Practical Common Lisp or The CL Cookbook. Both of those should be available in Emacs info format! If authors are lurking in here :-)

the code snippet used for the example is here: https://github.com/LispCookbook/cl-cookbook/pull/472