ready-lisp VS cl-cookbook

A few weeks ago, I was interested to actually include HS as info files I found in GCL or the one I found in an old package by Wiegley, into some form in SLY or as a standalone package for reading in Emacs info. While looking for info files, I found this old discussion on GCLs mailing list. It seemed like they included the standard, not the draft. Note the mail by Maguire in which he informs that the issue has been solved "offline". Up to date as I write this, GCL comes with those info files.

Both cl-community-spec and nova-spec looks very nice; I haven't seen any of them before; however, I prefer hyperspec directly in Emacs, so I can read it with C-h i. I have found two different versions that work nice, one is by J. Wiegley in his ready-lisp, it also has asdf in texinfo. Another one is in GCL; I have just cloned the repo and pointed Emacs to texinfo sources. In both cases it requires the manual installation; but I prefer to not have to toggle between Emacs and Browser. Eww probably works, but I found it to be slightly slow; reading offline manual in info mode is just way too faster to be ignored IMO :).

Anyway, we do lack Common Lisp info manuals in Emacs docs. You can git clone from the Gcl compiler, or clone from J. Wigleys read-lisp, but you will have to manually install them into Emacs (thus far). Gcl have lots of parts related to Gcl itself, but the hyperspec works fine (just ignore gcl parts), while Wiegleys is just hyperspec.

But after you get past some basic weird stuff, it's a quite wonderful language.

> I can only speak for myself, but I definitely reason about code outside in rather than inside out.

You can indent code to make it much easier to "parse", and use some macros that turn the code inside/out, it's more readable than most other languages.

The CL cookbook is an excellent resource, and this page links to several other excellent resources and books you can read for free online: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

The "new docs" also present the documentation in a "modern" looking way (rather than the 90's looks of what you get if you Google around): https://lisp-docs.github.io/cl-language-reference/

About other Lisps...

The Racket Guide is definitely not "bone-dry": https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/intro.html

It is well written and looks very beautiful to me.

On another Scheme, I find Guile docs also great: https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/index.ht...

They may be a bit more "dry" but they're to the point and very readable! In fact, I think Lisp languages tend to have great documentation.

> 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 :-)