ulisp VS cl-cookbook

I love his projects too. He's also the creator of uLisp.

http://www.ulisp.com/

Not CL, but there is ulisp (http://www.ulisp.com/) for microcontrollers, supposed to be really tiny, and there is Carp (https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp) which is without a GC so seems suitable for real-time stuff.

There's also ulisp (for Arduino projects etc.): http://www.ulisp.com/

This is larger, because there are functions for accessing peripherals, and the core is more standard lispy with 'caadr' et.al., and it has a compacting GC, so images can be saved as a compact blob.

You might consider uLisp, it's very Common Lispy for the memory constraints given (sans macros and splicing quote). And you can still connect to it and save an image. I've tried it and it works well enough. Here is the homepage.

Agreed - the interactivity is good. Lisp is close (have you seen http://www.ulisp.com/ - I can't believe they got into into that small a target!). Python is ok, but for some reason I don't use the REPL in the same way I do in Forth - I think calling functions is just harder somehow. Mostly is exploring valves from the Python REPL.

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 :-)