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exercism / common-lisp

Exercism exercises in Common Lisp.
https://exercism.org/tracks/common-lisp
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Where are the Common Lisp communities and enthusiasts? #206

Closed kytrinyx closed 6 years ago

kytrinyx commented 6 years ago

As we move towards the launch of the new version of Exercism we are going to be ramping up on actively recruiting people to help provide feedback.

Our goal is to get to 100%: everyone who submits a solution and wants feedback should get feedback. Good feedback. You can read more about this aspect of the new site here: http://mentoring.exercism.io/

To do this, we're going to need a lot more information about where we can find language enthusiasts.

In other words: where do people care a lot and/or know a lot about Common Lisp?

This is part of the project being tracked in https://github.com/exercism/meta/issues/103

wobh commented 6 years ago

checks the current toxicity level of comp.lang.lispto see if maybe it's gone down to say, Stackoverflow level -- immediately finding a post from the last 36 hours hectoring someone about line lengths, usenet customs, and calling them too lazy to be helped

No. There are no online communities enthusiastic about Common Lisp.

(TBF they did get some help later in their thread, but no, still no....)

kytrinyx commented 6 years ago

💙 Ok, it sounds like it'll be up to us, then!

verdammelt commented 6 years ago

Yeah... comp.lang.lisp mostly not friendly. Planet Lisp is a blog aggregator specific to Common Lisp and the only conference that would have significant Common Lisp content would be the International Lisp Conference.

Also hey @wobh 👋 - miss you around here!

kytrinyx commented 6 years ago

I've got what I need for now; closing this out. (Should you come across any other good sources, feel free to add them here, I'll be coming back to this). ❤️ 💛 💚 💙 💜 🖤 Thanks!

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

As someone who has fairly intensively dedicated most of the last 12 years of his life to Common Lisp, I think I can state with some authority that at this time, we are one of the absolute worst programming language communities on the planet. (Despite still being the best programming language, even given all the horrible stagnation and political hopelessness.)

I've gone into some details about this elsewhere, but here doesn't seem like the best place to be rude.

Anyway, hope this helps. ;P

kennytilton commented 6 years ago

Please. In the mid 50's John McCarthy climbed off some intergalactic missionary ship and gave us Lisp. After sixty years the programming language gene pool has irreversibly absorbed their ideas. Ask not whither Lisp, ask whither not? Jeez, even Java has lambda. Looking for a Lisp meetup? Search "Ruby or Clojure or Javascript or...". Not Lisp,though. We are dead. Please respect our privavcy.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

You are like a living koan. ;P

We are not dead, we are only dead inside. It's time for a revival. It's time to castrate the sociopaths.

verdammelt commented 6 years ago

@kennytilton I see this exercism track as a small way to teach people about old language, one that we can still learn from. Unlike other tracks such as ruby or go where the language is still very much alive - here we know that the language is a historic product.

I think it is great that the programming languages we have now have learned many things from Lisp(s). And I want to show people some of the origins of these ideas.

Also @kennytilton thanks from dropping in here. I consider it an honor :) I remember seeing your posts on comp.lang.lisp about Cells.

@Hexstream Thanks for your input and while I am curious about the 'details' you are talking about, let's leave them out of here.

informatimago commented 6 years ago

AFAIK, the answer is NO to all your questions. If you hadn’t required popularity, I could have provided more qualified answers to some.

kytrinyx commented 6 years ago

I don’t require popularity. I tried to write the issue in broad enough terms to be relevant to all 60 of the programming languages we have tracks for. The question that I am trying to answer is broadly: where is the language used, enjoyed, taught.

kennytilton commented 6 years ago

Used: https://tiltonsalgebra.com/#

And if Mark thinks CL is a "historic product", maybe he should find someone else to write about it.

-hk

On Sat, Jun 23, 2018 at 6:54 PM, Katrina Owen notifications@github.com wrote:

I don’t require popularity. I tried to write the issue in broad enough terms to be relevant to all 60 of the programming languages we have tracks for. The question that I am trying to answer is broadly: where is the language used, enjoyed, taught.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/exercism/common-lisp/issues/206#issuecomment-399715726, or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAOqPvtya-tOzqEnub2KYwG_y3s9Mmbcks5t_scZgaJpZM4UX35e .

-- Kenneth Tilton http://tiltontec.com/

spacebat commented 6 years ago

I find the lisp forum and subreddits to be reasonably civil: http://www.lispforum.com/viewforum.php?f=2 http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp http://www.reddit.com/r/Common_Lisp

verdammelt commented 6 years ago

I happily stand corrected. I'll get some of these links to reddit etc. into the documentation for the track.

lispm commented 6 years ago

The Common Lisp community has a bunch of places:

lisp IRC channel for chat, additional there are a bunch of other channels for implementations like sbcl and ccl

reddit/r/lisp and reddit/r/common_lisp for discussions reddit/r/leanlisp for people learning Lisp

planet.lisp.org is a aggregator

quicklisp.org bundles libraries and releases regular updates

awesome-cl.com is a curated list of resources

https://www.cliki.net is a community run Wiki

There is a community authored cookbook: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/

http://lisp-lang.org is a starter page for new Lispers

Conferences and workshops are the International Lisp Conference and the European Lisp Symposium. The next ELS is in Italy: https://european-lisp-symposium.org/2019/index.html

Lisp jobs is resource for jobs: https://lispjobs.wordpress.com

There are regular Lisp Game Jams: https://github.com/lispgames/lispgames.github.io/wiki/Lisp-Game-Jams

There is a community driven hosting project: https://common-lisp.net

Questions are being answered on Stackoverflow: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/common-lisp Code Reviews: https://codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/common-lisp

There is a calendar for Lisp meetings: http://planet.lisp.org/meetings/

The computer history museum collects Common Lisp (and Lisp) history: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/common_lisp_family/

There are probably ten to fifteen actively maintained implementations (ABCL, ECL, CCL, SBCL, CLISP, ...) with their various mailing lists and other community resources.

Franz Inc. offers Common Lisp courses. https://franz.com/services/classes/

Franz Inc. has a newsletter: https://franz.com/ps/newsletter-edt.lhtml

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

Great list, however CLISP has apparently not seen a release in 8 years so I'm not sure I would call it "actively maintained".

edit: From here Rainer Joswig deleted all his replies to me so see the archived version for the full picture. Thank you.

(And sorry to the owners of this thread about this important stuff happening here if that's any inconvenience... Now you have a better pulse of the Common Lisp community, though...)

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

The key word here is unreleased.

The fork you've linked to seems extremely "obscure", it doesn't really seem to be mentioned anywhere, I don't even know how anyone is supposed to find it other by popping up in whatever channel and asking experts. I've been an active part of the Common Lisp community for the last 10+ years and been following it pretty closely and I don't think I would have ever found this fork without individual help. And even then, it's not immediately clear to me what the status of this fork is, it doesn't seem "official" or anything. (If it was, I would expect it would be linked to from somewhere other than random comments in whatever chat rooms or GitHub issues.)

As I have previously said, I guess in essence, our big problem is that we rely on folklore to spread important info and IT DOESN'T SCALE.

The official result at the very top of google results for "clisp" is https://clisp.sourceforge.io/ and that says Current version: 2.49 (2010-07-07). It's pretty clear to me that's what "normal" people are going to find, or should be expected to find. My general impression for years has been that CLISP is mostly used by confused newbies, and I would expect that those would use that release by default, not some random obscure fork nobody even knows about.

And again, popping up in whatever channel and asking questions should NOT be a requirement for basic orientation. And I profoundly do not understand why you, who claims there are 10+ actively maintained Common Lisp implementations, insists on putting the hilariously user-hostile CLISP on the same level as 100x better-supported implementations like SBCL. Treating CLISP as a serious alternative is doing everyone a disservice.

guicho271828 commented 6 years ago

My take:

guicho271828 commented 6 years ago

@lispm, I still second @Hexstream . We are not talking about personal projects, but about a mature thing that has a big reliable sign for general public. Don't recommend CLISP until it updates the latest official major version, it is disqualifying right now. If you are THAT seriously involved in CLISP mainling list (which is your personal preference), then please use that influence for making them publishing a major release.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

I just think great documentation is a better approach than individual hand-holding. (Especially when some of the most trusted "helping hands" are secretly sociopathic.) I, for one, am certainly not fond of having to contact people to acquire BASIC information. I am very glad I was able to become an expert in Common Lisp mostly just by reading the CLHS, without having to desperately rely on the "community" for basic guidance (other than the initial Emacs/Slime/SBCL recommendation).

It is not realistic to expect anyone to subscribe to a mailing list of a CL implementation which has apparently (and actually) not seen a release in 8 years.

Don't you realize how crazy it is that Rainer Joswig himself has to tell me personally that this new fork is official for me to know that it is official? The CLISP situation right now is simply hopeless, and it is unfair and counter-productive to treat it as a viable alternative when there are actually stupendously actively maintained and supported implementations like SBCL around.

If whatever high-level experts still want to privately use CLISP for whatever personal reasons, that's fine, but recommending it as a viable general alternative is just crazy and does NOT reflect well on the community.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

Exactly, that's enough for YOU. That shouldn't be considered enough generally.

You're a high-level Common Lisp expert. Not everyone is on that level. Some people would actually like to properly welcome new people in this community.

A LOT of people are not fond of having to contact people for basic information. Please stop doubling down on a subject you haven't even given a serious thought to.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

Is it really difficult for you to understand that I'd really rather read great documentation than dealing with people like you? I can't imagine what it must be like for people with much less resources than me.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

I have a lot of fun idiosyncracies myself, but I don't try to recommend them as things everyone should do even if it's against their nature.

I like to talk to fellow Lisp users and learn from them. is about the most ironic thing you could say right now. I AM talking to people, that's you, and you don't listen and you don't learn anything.

I've been talking about and to the Common Lisp community for years on my twitter, and powerful people like you have brutally ignored me. You're doing a lot of "talking", but you're not listening. This community is a HELLHOLE and it's because of people like you.

edit: You should stop "talking to fellow Lisp users" and start talking WITH them.

edit 2: I downvoted your comments because they were unconstructive. I have otherwise virtually never downvoted comments on GitHub.

guicho271828 commented 6 years ago

@lispm ,

Personally I also do not ask other people to do work for me. Publishing CLISP's major version is not the work for you, it is the work for the community.

@Hexstream , I know you have a good mind but you should not start a fight at least on someone else's issues board that is not your own.

So @kytrinyx @verdammelt @wobh you would now see how the common lisp ecosystem looks like, although these two persons are definitely the extreme cases that stand out in various forums. We have very unique, stubborn and interesting hackers from diverse generations.

genworks commented 6 years ago

From where I sit, the Common Lisp community and ecosystem are alive and well. Some random observations:

In April we had about 100 people from around the world take the trouble to attend the European Lisp Symposium in Spain (as it happens, I was the Program Chair). 80+% of the conference was Common Lisp.

Despite what I consider to be unwarranted criticism, Quicklisp and ASDF are heroic efforts which have set the stage for a real resurgence.

Any volunteer efforts should be appreciated and celebrated. Entitled peanut gallery members who look the gift horse of volunteer efforts in the mouth really grind my gears.

My company, Genworks, an entirely Common Lisp based company, has been providing my sole source of income for over 20 years, and continues to do so (knock wood). We have also enabled downstream value-added resellers to thrive over and above what we do ourselves. If anyone is interested in converting our flagship CL-based KBE system into a more fashionable language platform, please let me know - we are open to partnering, but not pursuing that distraction ourselves.

The Common Lisp Foundation is about to launch an appreciation fundraiser for ASDF.

I’m always puzzled by what kind of agenda drives these people who insist that Lisp is “dead.” Those kind of blanket statements betray such a frog-in-the-well mentality. I also have to wonder what kind of agenda drives some of these people to make such toxic proclamations.

Finally, here’s a good recent summary of the state of CL these days: http://stevelosh.com/blog/2018/08/a-road-to-common-lisp/

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

@guicho271828 I did not "start a fight", I simply pointed out that CLISP has apparently not seen a release in 8 years so I'm not sure I would call it "actively maintained". and Rainer Joswig started making no sense and it kept getting worse. When super high-level people like Rainer Joswig think and advocate that resources don't matter, we have a BIG problem on our hands.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

And I told you that this fork is super obscure and thus doesn't really count from a normal user's perspective (especially if they don't want to actively chase after people for basic info), and I also can't find where you told me they were working towards a release.

Your attitude would certainly be ingraining Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in me about the future prospects of the Common Lisp community if I wasn't confident we (and this excludes people with your kind of attitude) can eventually save the situation.

guicho271828 commented 6 years ago

If the maintainer considers the current HEAD is the latest version then at least they should update the website to link to it. If they don't do that, the official version is still what is available 8 years ago. So the project is unmaintained. If they can't do that due to the lack of man power, then the website is unmaintained, thus the project is unmaintained. A project is not only the source code but it also includes the entire support and documentation. If the website cannot be updated, then the project is unmaintained.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

I've already effectively told you that this is virtually indistinguishable from a fork, since the usual markers of officialness are simply ABSENT (on top of being almost impossible to find unless they want to risk interacting with people like you).

Not single-handedly, but I have already been making a good difference, (which you of course have NO IDEA about since you've been completely ignoring me since forever), and I will make a much bigger difference still within a few years.

Here's something you have NOT missed, though. I released https://clos-mop.hexstreamsoft.com/ a long time ago and you KNOW it is important and you KNOW that it exists and you have simply REFUSED to promote it in any way. I know this because it was pointed out to you on reddit and you chose to update the link to the old version instead of doing anything about my new modern public domain version. https://twitter.com/HexstreamSoft/statuses/925745266581524480 (The corresponding sidebar is here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Common_Lisp/comments/76kkfu/hexstreams_online_mop_reference_is_complete/)

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

Now I know this is not a fork, but only because Rainer Joswig personally told me so in the obscure thread that we are in that this is the case. BUT WILL IT SCALE?!?

It's not minor, most people would find my version at least 10x better than any previous versions. It's very condescending of you to not relay important information to people for your own personal irrelevant reasons.

My porn stuff is AT LEAST 4 CLICKS AWAY ON AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT SITE.

Invoking stupid excuses like this is typical of the Common Lisp mafia, btw.

edit: Also, please describe in details what you think "my attitude towards the Lisp community" is. A big part of my "attitude" about it is that I care about ETHICS and that's fundamentally incompatible with corrupt people like you and especially Zach Beane.

guicho271828 commented 6 years ago

@lispm Talking about his porn stuff is a bad move, irrelevant. His Twitter is not the main entrypoint to his work on software but about his personal everything, just like I tweet about a lot of car stuff. I agree with your points on the MOP spec though. I appreciate your effort @Hexstream but I prefer the simpler html.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

@lispm These days most people are actually on mobile, and they actually like a nice presentation and good usability (and using a MAINTAINED resource). I strongly suspect you have NOT carefully reviewed my version if you think it's just the same old shit as ever. And of course, my version carefully PRESERVES the "old" content and is faithful to it, because nobody wants some random new spec with random differences from the old. But my new version augments the existing content in many ways, without compromising the original material.

It is simply patently insane that powerful people like you have chosen to completely bury this relevant resource for your own personal irrelevant reasons, instead of sharing the relevant news and LETTING PEOPLE THINK AND JUDGE FOR THEMSELVES.

I understand that some small percentage of people would actually prefer a more barren look, this feature was in the works but I received virtually ZERO support from the community as usual, so I went to do other things (most of them Common Lisp related) for now.

If you really want to get into "read this quote from above", here's a really fun one:

The Lisp community values diversity - diversity in needs, approaches, platforms, coding styles, etc.

YOU said that.

How about also valuing diversity by accepting, acknowledging and promoting relevant work even when it comes from sex-positive people?

Edit: I should point out that YOU are doing the FUD here, Rainer Joswig.

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

I will never get ANY support from the old guard in this community because I care about ethics (which most of my "attitude problems" come from), I understood this long ago.

I released https://clos-mop.hexstreamsoft.com/, a HIGHLY RELEVANT resource, as I said there:

CLOS MOP is one of our CROWN JEWELS, practically part of standard, closer-mop consistently #2 in Quicklisp download stats, I made a superb job with https://clos-mop.hexstreamsoft.com/ . [...]

Despite this, I've had virtually zero support from the community, overall. There is much more to say about it, but I think the situation is appropriately described as "patently insane".

I'd agree that this is useful and I can see that your version has some improvements.

You'll have at least said one useful thing today...

Many technical communities I know have relative strict rules on 'sexual harassment' and exposing random people to porn content at companies, schools or universities isn't tolerated . Your Twitter feed (and probably other stuff) is strictly NSFW. There is no diversity here - and I'm living in Europe.

This is offensively irrelevant and off-topic. And probably only about 1% or so of my twitter is actually NSFW (especially sexually), unless you count exposing corruption as being NSFW. Anyone who thinks my twitter is "NSFW" really has no idea what a NSFW twitter even looks like and/or is comforting themselves in a convenient lie.

btw all my relevant Common Lisp contributions had already been systematically ignored for YEARS before the porn stuff took any significance (mostly in isolated places) in LATE 2016.

Where was the porn at https://clos-mop.hexstreamsoft.com/, again?

edit: I am again obligated to point out that YOU are playing the FUD game.

informatimago commented 6 years ago

@Hexstream Hello! I think you've been direly misdirected. You need to use Allegro CL or Lispwork. Those implementations are maintained and provide regular new release. They are fully documented and provide support.

Now, if you're interested into contributing to open software, you know the gitlab repo of clisp, make PRs! (But I agree with you, open software is hyper hipped; IME, it costs 3 or 4 times the work to have a PR accepted than to make the original patch. It may be not worth it.)

Hexstream commented 6 years ago

I'm sure this will be joyfully misrepresented as "harassment" but Rainer Joswig (lispm) has deleted all his replies to me in this thread in a desperate attempt to conceal the truth about him, so here is an archived version of the thread including all his comments but the last one (between my 2 last replies): https://web.archive.org/web/20180915193143/https://github.com/exercism/common-lisp/issues/206

(This is very important, please don't censor this!)

edit: There was at least one Rainer Joswig reply between each of my replies starting from here, no I was not talking to myself, see the archived version I linked above for details. ;P

verdammelt commented 6 years ago

Whew! I don't check in here for a few days and craziness happens!

@iHiD thanks for locking this thread

I might have more to say once I've had the time to digest this.