wscl VS cl-cookbook

You can't seriously say that, just because one targets a well-specified machine, that the language being used is well-specified. The determinism of a Clojure-on-JVM program would also be dependent on the particular code the Clojure compiler generates. In Common Lisp there is the Armed Bear Common Lisp implementation, which runs on a JVM. Does it benefit from JVM determinism or not? It probably does not, because the JVM is simply not aware of undefined behaviour that ABCL or Clojure are implicitly defining.

When it comes to having different platforms, it would also be necessary for any other compilers to generate semantically identical code. Different Clojure systems do _not_ do that. For example, arithmetic in ClojureScript uses JS floats where Clojure-on-JVM and others use integers of some size.

In my experience, writing a non-conforming CL program is hard, and much harder than writing a program without undefined behaviour in C. I am not sure why, other than vaguely suggesting the UB is more "localised" in some way. But there is also a modification of the ANSI standard being worked on, which attempts to eliminate undefined behaviour <https://github.com/s-expressionists/wscl>.

Common Lisp was standardised by an ANSI committee. Here is a list of issues that were voted on. Nowadays there is also the Well Specified Common Lisp project, but no issues have been voted on yet.

SICL is still an implementation of Common Lisp, and not of a new programming language (give or take some additional features, such as first-class global environments). That said, there is some overlap between the authors of SICL and the authors of Well Specified Common Lisp <https://github.com/s-expressionists/wscl>; but WSCL only really defines some undefined and contradictory behaviour in the ANSI Common Lisp specification.

The HyperSpec is a (derived work of a) language specification - its job is precisely to explain infrequently used things in too much detail. (And it ironically fails in many places.) Generally, one does not want to read a specification, unless they know they need to check something specific.

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 :-)