cl-autowrap VS book

> Lack of access to the C libraries.

???

I recently started learning Common Lisp for fun (and fun it is!) and the ease of accessing C libraries was one of the things that surprised me in a positive way.

Using https://github.com/rpav/cl-autowrap one can simply write (c-include "file.h") and the API defined in "file.h" is accessible from Lisp. I can't think of a simpler way.

Even without cl-autowrap, FFI using https://cffi.common-lisp.dev/ seems simple enough.

I think the closest is cl-autowrap. I can imagine a higher level wrapper around it by which it can translate the python header file into the CL counterpart, although I'm not sure how much work the translation might entail. Also, because python and lisp semantics can differ considerably, the generated code might be trying to do weird things - again an issue of translation.

Common lisp has a "pretty OK" story for calling C code whenever some speed is needed [0,1]. In my opinion, they suffer from some of the documentation/quick start problems that common lisp has, but they're otherwise usable.

Some of Naughty Dog's late 90's/early 2000's games (Jak and Daxter, Jak II) were written in a lisp called GOAL, Game Oriented Assembly Lisp [2]

[0] https://github.com/rpav/cl-autowrap

The closest thing to what you request, that I'm aware of, is cl-autowrap (to use C code from Lisp) but it is not standard in any way. CFFI is the de facto standard for using C from Lisp across different implementations.

:claw tracks back to 2017 as a fork of cl-autowrap with cl-autowrap/pull/83 feature.

If you're interested in FFI, then yeah CFFI is the standard. The other comments addressed speed, I also wanted to point out https://github.com/rpav/cl-autowrap which is built on top of CFFI and can help get a wrapper up and running faster. After using autowrap's c-include you can then use CFFI basically like normal or some useful autowrap/plus-c's helper functions -- e.g. in one project, I have an SDL_Event (https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL_Event) and to access event.key.keysym.scancode I have a helper function that's just (plus-c:c-ref event sdl2-ffi:sdl-event :key :keysym :scancode). Last year I wanted to try out using FMOD, and even though it's closed source and has a (to me) "interesting" API things worked easily: https://gist.github.com/Jach/dc2ec7b9402d0ec5836a935384cacdc... More work would be needed to make a nice wrapper, type things more fully, etc. but depending on the C library you might find someone's already done that (or made a start) and made it available from quicklisp.

In recent years there has also been cl-autowrap; caveats -

There is the cl-autowrap that can generate lisp packages from C header filesc- I am unsure if it sticks to ANSI C or goes beyond. It inturn depends on c2ffi for the first time around.

My first port of call was to google learn rust which lead me to "the book". The book is a first steps guide written by the rust community for newbies (or Rustlings as they're called) to gain a 'solid grasp of the language'.

Before Prodzilla, I’d read 'The Book' a couple of times, and had made my way through Rustlings, but hadn’t yet built a serious project in Rust.

To answer your last question;

Start with the Rust book.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

Then do Rustlings until the syntax becomes muscle memory.

Then join the Discord and start doing little projects.

You won’t get up to the proficiency of other languages as quickly in Rust. It takes longer. For me it’s taking a lot longer, but I enjoy it.

Before diving into these repositories, familiarize yourself with Rust and its development ecosystem. The official Rust book is an excellent resource for developers at all levels. Each repository has documentation on how to contribute, covering code style, issue tracking, and pull requests.

This is my third Rust book after the official book and Rust in Action. The other two books are great, but they were too theoretical for me. I'm a slow learner and had much trouble grokking Rust's features and idiosyncrasies. When I was done with these books, I was lost and unsure of what I could do.

It's the same reason everything digital and downloadable isn't free: there's a cost to create it and there's a value to it.

For a language developer to charge for a book about that language, I think that's a completely valid way to make some money off of their work.

Even the Rust book, "The Rust Programming Language" is available freely online [0], but also as a print and ebook for sale via NoStarchPress [1].

[0] https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/

[1] https://nostarch.com/rust-programming-language-2nd-edition

You know you can just read it online right now in 2 different variants It does contain some systems programming.

I am looking at The Book (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/), but hoped there was an amazing person on youtube.

Yeah, I'll build something, finally trying webassembly.

https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ https://github.com/rust-lang/rustlings https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/