Jeremy Field jdf-id-au

Developer experience, libraries, performance… (2021/11)

I'll preface this with three things. 1. I prefer schemes over Common Lisps, and I prefer Racket of the Schemes. 2. There is more to it than the points I raise here. 3. I assume you have no previous experience with Lisp, and don't have a preference for Schemes over Common Lisp. With all that out of the way... I would say Common Lisp/SBCL. Let me explain

SBCL Is by far the most common of the CL implementations in 2021. It will be the easiest to find help for, easiest to find videos about, and many major open source CL projects are written using SBCL
Download a binary directly from the website http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html (even for M1 macs) to get up and running (easy to get started)
Great video for setting up Emacs + Slime + Quick Lisp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnWVu8VVDbI

Now as to why Common Lisp over Scheme

Testimonies

CL's compiler

The thing in CL I miss most doing Clojure as my day job? CL's compiler. I like having a compiler tell me at compile time about the mistakes I've made. Bogus arguments. Unreachable code because of unhandled exceptions, and so on. CL saves me round after round of bugs that in clojure aren't found until you run the code. If you test well, it's found when testing, if you don't it's found in production. "Clojure compiler" almost demands air quotes.

CL's optional but oh-so-useful model of type declarations is also infinitely more useful (to me) than Clojure's use of "spec", and instrumentation that happens only at test time because of the cost. Depending on the OPTIMIZE declarations, other type defs are a floor wax and dessert topping. Want checks for argument types? Lower optimizations. Want most efficient machine code? High optimizations.

/u/Decweb, March 2023 https://www.reddit.com/r/lisp/comments/11ttnxk/the_rise_fall_of_lisp_too_good_for_the_rest_of/jczpysp/

Comparision of JaneStreet Base and OCaml Stdlib

How to use Base

Either use Base selectively:

# #show List.hd;;

Introduction

I was recently asked to explain why I felt disappointed by Haskell, as a language. And, well. Crucified for crucified, I might as well criticise Haskell publicly.

First though, I need to make it explicit that I claim no particular skill with the language - I will in fact vehemently (and convincingly!) argue that I'm a terrible Haskell programmer. And what I'm about to explain is not meant as The Truth, but my current understanding, potentially flawed, incomplete, or flat out incorrect. I welcome any attempt at proving me wrong, because when I dislike something that so many clever people worship, it's usually because I missed an important detail.

Another important point is that this is not meant to convey the idea that Haskell is a bad language. I do feel, however, that the vocal, and sometimes aggressive, reverence in which it's held might lead people to have unreasonable expectations. It certainly was my case, and the reason I'm writing this.

Type classes

I love the concept of type class

Falsehoods programmers believe about time

This is a compiled list of falsehoods programmers tend to believe about working with time.

Don't re-invent a date time library yourself. If you think you understand everything about time, you're probably doing it wrong.

Falsehoods

There are always 24 hours in a day.
February is always 28 days long.
Any 24-hour period will always begin and end in the same day (or week, or month).

	package xyz.arwhite.swing;

	import java.awt.Dimension;
	import java.awt.event.MouseAdapter;
	import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
	import java.awt.event.MouseWheelEvent;
	import java.lang.reflect.Constructor;
	import java.lang.reflect.InvocationHandler;
	import java.lang.reflect.Method;
	import java.lang.reflect.Proxy;

	// Run any SwiftUI view as a Mac app.

	import Cocoa
	import SwiftUI

	NSApplication.shared.run {
	VStack {
	Text("Hello, World")
	.padding()
	.background(Capsule().fill(Color.blue))

	// How to build:
	// # compile the metal shaders
	// xcrun -sdk macosx metal -c shaders.metal -o shaders.air
	// xcrun -sdk macosx metallib shaders.air -o shaders.metallib
	// # compile the c file
	// clang app_metal.c -framework Cocoa -framework Metal -o metal_c.app
	//
	//
	// Draw a triangle using metal
	// Metal tutorial followed here: https://www.raywenderlich.com/7475-metal-tutorial-getting-started

	(defproject test-3d "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"
	:description "FIXME: write description"
	:url "http://example.com/FIXME"
	:license {:name "EPL-2.0 OR GPL-2.0-or-later WITH Classpath-exception-2.0"
	:url "https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0/"}
	:dependencies [[org.clojure/clojure "1.10.0"]
	[org.lwjgl/lwjgl "3.2.2"]
	[org.lwjgl/lwjgl "3.2.2" :classifier "natives-linux"]
	[org.lwjgl/lwjgl-opengl "3.2.2"]
	[org.lwjgl/lwjgl-opengl "3.2.2" :classifier "natives-linux"]