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Re: In need of user-friendly Lisp interpreter

Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 8:06 am
by findinglisp
Shake wrote:Also, this is my first post here. I hope to be active here as I pick up on my first coding language. I don't mean to promote competition for this forum, but are there any other communities that I could look into for Lisp help?
Welcome to LispForum. We're happy to help however we can.

You can try USENET comp.lang.lisp. The community there is pretty active, but I started LispForum to give people another place to interact without some of the issues that seem entrenched in comp.lang.lisp (e.g. a good dose of smug Lisp weenieness). Newbies sometimes find it pretty rough going. You can also try #lisp on freenode.net IRC. It provides a bit more real-time interaction.

Re: In need of user-friendly Lisp interpreter

Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2009 5:53 pm
by duncan
Shake wrote:I started teaching myself Lisp just this week, and I've hit my first major hurdle: I can't seem to find an interpreter/compiler that works for me. I have tried four of them so far, and I'm assuming they're four of the more popular ones. I'm not sure. I have tried the following interpreters:

Poplog (w/ Lisp language loaded)

Ufasoft Lisp Studio

GNU CLisp (Windows version. It's a generic name, but this is the one w/ a Menorah as its launch icon)

Visual Lisp for AutoCAD (I believe this one interprets AutoLISP, a dialect of Lisp that CAD uses, not sure though)
I have to admit that when I read your first post I was half-convinced that you were joking. Those are some obscure implementations, except for clisp, and autolisp iff you are an autocad user. I would like to put in a word of defense for poplog though. It was my first CL (albeit a cltl1 CL), and it's pretty usable once you get the hang of it. I wouldn't ever recommend it as a lisp environment for someone trying to learn CL, but I have fond memories of it, and fonder memories of Pop. And it's pretty unrivaled as a combined environment for scheme, CLTL1 CL, pop-11 and.. err.. prolog maybe? It's been a while.

If the only thing you're interested in doing is autocad work then I think you might do best to just concentrate on autolisp. If you're interested in programming in general- well, scheme might well be a good choice, but if you find CL more to your liking I'd say that if you are already familiar with Linux and Emacs SBCL+Slime ought to be considered the default for beginners. If you're not a Linux+Emacs user then you'll probably wind up frustrated if you try to pick all three things up at once. In that case I think that the Lispworks trial edition + Edi Weitz's starter pack is the easiest thing to do under windows. It has a limited heap size, and it quits every five hours, but the heap limit is pretty generous. Certainly generous enough to let you learn CL.

Re: In need of user-friendly Lisp interpreter

Posted: Mon Aug 03, 2009 8:16 am
by Shake
Well, this is a lot of good information. I think I can manage to pull through my initial fears and worries about learning a programming language now.