quicklisp-client VS awesome-lisp-companies

Yes, that's clear.

I'm not very familiar with how quicklisp works. I thought that “updates once a month” implies a separate update channel (distribution, ...).

Looking at the relevant issue, https://github.com/quicklisp/quicklisp-client/issues/167 , it's not clear that even hashes are in place.

I recently found out that most Nix fetchers use https, but do not actually do verification (`curl --insecure` or equivalent libcurl settings). Channel updates do verify and include hashes, so the overall chain is authenticated.

The latest comment I see about this here from Oct. 2022 says they're working on it. There's also comment by the developer in 2016 saying want to improve the security soon, so it doesn't really seem this will actually happen soon. I realise making signature verification work cross platform in pure lisp without external dependencies isn't easy but from latest comment it seems they have that working, in a branch written 4 years ago? The simplest no-code solution is just since quicklisp is published every month or so, on each new update publish a file with sha256 hash of every package contained in quicklisp signed with same developer's pgp key they are already using to sign download of the initial quicklisp.lisp, yes then users if they care about security would have to manually download the file and verify signature every month or so but it's at least some solution that can be done now.

> That's what regular devs do, they don't even bother writing articles or commenting on HN :-)

I'll take the bait, and roll up several of my comments into one.

First, the support contract costs from the commercial vendors can make sense. It's one of the most expensive parts of software. We joke about fixing relatives' printers, but its not false. Support costs introduce a counter-balance.

Second, a message to everyone looking into or using QuickLisp, it uses http instead of https: https://github.com/quicklisp/quicklisp-client/issues/167

You can patch your version to fix this. I'd also recommend adding firewall rules to deny in case your patches roll back. And any other mitigation. Or stricter policies, such as not using it, if it makes sense for your organization.

And the AI bots? I hope there aren't people herding them who don't want to, that's how you get unloving brats and a crappy world.

I found this github issue about it, open since 2018: https://github.com/quicklisp/quicklisp-client/issues/167

I agree 100% about needing to test and audit for security. But based on the information I've seen and public activity in repos, I assumed Xach was going for home-grown CL implementation. https://github.com/quicklisp/quicklisp-client/blob/pgp/quicklisp/openpgp.lisp

Thanks to ITA Software (powering Kayak and Orbitz), Google dedicates resources to open-source Common Lisp development. More specifically, to SBCL:

> Doug Katzman talked about his work at Google getting SBCL to work with Unix better. For those of you who don’t know, he’s done a lot of work on SBCL over the past couple of years, not only adding a lot of new features to the GC and making it play better with applications which have alien parts to them, but also has done a tremendous amount of cleanup on the internals and has helped SBCL become even more Sanely Bootstrappable. That’s a topic for another time, and I hope Doug or Christophe will have the time to write up about the recent improvements to the process, since it really is quite interesting.

> Anyway, what Doug talked about was his work on making SBCL more amenable to external debugging tools, such as gdb and external profilers. It seems like they interface with aliens a lot from Lisp at Google, so it’s nice to have backtraces from alien tools understand Lisp. It turns out a lot of prerequisite work was needed to make SBCL play nice like this, including implementing a non-moving GC runtime, so that Lisp objects and especially Lisp code (which are normally dynamic space objects and move around just like everything else) can’t evade the aliens and will always have known locations.

https://mstmetent.blogspot.com/2020/01/sbcl20-in-vienna-last...

https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/yes-google-develops-comm...

The ASDF system definition facility, at the heart of CL projects, also comes from Google developers.

While we're at it, some more companies using CL today: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

Everyone, if you don't have a clue on how's Common Lisp going these days, I suggest:

https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/these-years-in-common-li... (https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/107oejk/these_years_i...)

A curated list of libraries: https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl

Some companies, the ones we hear about: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

and oh, some more editors besides Emacs or Vim: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (Atom/Pulsar support is good, VSCode support less so, Jetbrains one getting good, Lem is a modern Emacsy built in CL, Jupyter notebooks, cl-repl for a terminal REPL, etc)

Examples (for Common Lisp, so not citing Emacs): reddit v1, Google's ITA Software that powers airfare search engines (Kayak, Orbitz…), Postgres' pgloader (http://pgloader.io/), which was re-written from Python to Common Lisp, Opus Modus for music composition, the Maxima CAS, PTC 3D designer CAD software (used by big brands worldwide), Grammarly, Mirai, the 3D editor that designed Gollum's face, the ScoreCloud app that lets you whistle or play an instrument and get the music score,

but also the ACL2 theorem prover, used in the industry since the 90s, NASA's PVS provers and SPIKE scheduler used for Hubble and JWT, many companies in Quantum Computing, companies like SISCOG, who plans the transportation systems of european metropolis' underground since the 80s, Ravenpack who's into big-data analysis for financial services (they might be hiring), Keepit (https://www.keepit.com/), Pocket Change (Japan, https://www.pocket-change.jp/en/), the new Feetr in trading (https://feetr.io/, you can search HN), Airbus, Alstom, Planisware (https://planisware.com),

or also the open-source screenshotbot (https://screenshotbot.io), the Kandria game (https://kandria.com/),

and the companies in https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies and on LispWorks and Allegro's Success Stories.

https://github.com/tamurashingo/reddit1.0/

http://opusmodus.com/

https://www.ptc.com/en/products/cad/3d-design

http://www.izware.com/mirai

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scorecloud-express/id566535238

> but there doesn't seem to be one that really stands out as pragmatic, industrial

disagree ;) This industrial language is Common Lisp.

Some industrial uses:

- http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/index.html

- https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

- https://lisp-lang.org/success/

Example companies: Intel's programmable chips, the ACL2 theorem prover (https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2015.039...), urban transportation planning systems (SISCOG), Quantum Computing (HRL Labs, Rigetti…), big data financial analysis (Ravenpack, they might be hiring), Google, Boeing, the NASA, etc.

ps: Python competing? strong disagree^^

and of course, a quite recent list of companies, in addition of LW's success stories page: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

Hey there, newer member of the first group here. Please see https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/ to update your meta-comment. So, is CL used in the industry today, yes or no?

Personal note: I much prefer to maintain a long-living software in Common Lisp rather than in Python, thank you very much. May all the new programmers learn easily and all the teams have lots of ~~burden~~ work with Python, good for them.

Common Lisp has many industrial uses though.

(https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

https://lisp-lang.org/success/

http://www.lispworks.com/success-stories/index.html

such as

https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/ (theorem prover used by big corp©)

https://allegrograph.com/press_room/barefoot-networks-uses-f... (Intel programmable chip)

quantum compilers https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32741928

etc, etc, etc)

A few more that we know of, using CL today: https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies/

Others: https://lisp-lang.org/success/

yes

https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lisp-companies

http://lisp-lang.org/success/

industrial theorem prover, design of Intel chips, quantum compilers...

and little me, being more productive and having more fun than with python to deploy boring tools (read a DB, format the data, send to FTP servers, show a web interface...).