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New reference for the SLIME screencast

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pchristensen

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Feb 8, 2008, 4:26:00 PM2/8/08
to
I've been spending the last couple weeks getting started with Lisp
development and one of the best resources I found was Marco
Barringer's SLIME movie. I've seen a few other blogs that mentioned
that it was useful, and I wanted to make a contribution to the SLIME
effort. I did a review/annotation of the movie, with timestamps,
explanations, all the key chords, and links to relevant
documentation. I hope that others find it useful and that it can
reduce some of the learning curve in getting started with Lisp.
Comments appreciated!

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelispemacs-screencast/

vanekl

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Feb 8, 2008, 7:08:51 PM2/8/08
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pchristensen wrote:
...
> Comments appreciated!
>
> http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelispemacs-screencast/

I use the CVS version, which wouldn't work until I added,
(slime-setup '(slime-fancy slime-asdf))
Something you may want to mention.

pchristensen

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Feb 9, 2008, 1:29:01 AM2/9/08
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On Feb 8, 6:08 pm, vanekl <va...@acd.net> wrote:
> pchristensen wrote:
>
> ...
>
> > Comments appreciated!
>
> >http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelisp...

>
> I use the CVS version, which wouldn't work until I added,
> (slime-setup '(slime-fancy slime-asdf))
> Something you may want to mention.

Yeah, I haven't set it up according to the directions. I have the
preconfigured SLIME that comes with Lisp in a Box. I was wondering
about the CVS setup. I'll add that to the document. Thanks!

Ken Tilton

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Feb 9, 2008, 2:38:59 AM2/9/08
to

pchristensen wrote:
> I've been spending the last couple weeks getting started with Lisp
> development and one of the best resources I found was Marco
> Barringer's SLIME movie. I've seen a few other blogs that mentioned
> that it was useful, and I wanted to make a contribution to the SLIME
> effort. I did a review/annotation of the movie, with timestamps,
> explanations, all the key chords, and links to relevant
> documentation. I hope that others find it useful and that it can
> reduce some of the learning curve in getting started with Lisp.
> Comments appreciated!

er, Hip hip hooray? This is my dream come true, fresh blood invigorating
the CL landscape. We get a /lot/ of noobs who whine about the tools
learning curve, and I understand that it is hard, but I also understand
that the situation will not change until folks like you make the climb
and before charging off to create the next Viaweb take a moment or week
to make things easier for the next bloke.

Kudos,

Kenny

>
> http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelispemacs-screencast/

--
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius

Peter Hildebrandt

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Feb 9, 2008, 8:32:00 AM2/9/08
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Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>
> pchristensen wrote:
>> I've been spending the last couple weeks getting started with Lisp
>> development and one of the best resources I found was Marco
>> Barringer's SLIME movie. I've seen a few other blogs that mentioned
>> that it was useful, and I wanted to make a contribution to the SLIME
>> effort. I did a review/annotation of the movie, with timestamps,
>> explanations, all the key chords, and links to relevant
>> documentation. I hope that others find it useful and that it can
>> reduce some of the learning curve in getting started with Lisp.
>> Comments appreciated!
>
> er, Hip hip hooray?

Seconded. This is really cool! I hope you'll stick around a create more
ressources like this.

Peter

Message has been deleted

Chaitanya Gupta

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Feb 10, 2008, 5:12:18 AM2/10/08
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pchristensen wrote:
>
> http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelispemacs-screencast/

Nice. Btw, SLIME file translations are as easy as this:

(push (slime-create-filename-translator :machine-instance
"[cl:machine-instance]"
:remote-host "[host-name]"
:username "[user]")
slime-filename-translations)

See
http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/doc/html/Setting-up-pathname-translations.html#Setting-up-pathname-translations

Chaitanya

Chaitanya Gupta

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Feb 10, 2008, 5:05:51 AM2/10/08
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pchristensen

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Feb 11, 2008, 10:34:57 AM2/11/08
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On Feb 9, 9:53 pm, Andreas Davour <ante...@updateLIKE.uu.HELLse>
wrote:
> >http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelisp...
>
> Very impressive! Good work.
>
> Next step, make another screencast that add to what Marco covered! :)
>
> /Andreas
>
> --
> A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
> Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
> A: Top-posting.
> Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

Thanks for the positive feedback! I don't know when I'll be ready to
do a screencast of my own - it would be really choppy with me looking
over at my Emacs cheat sheet every time I tried to do something! What
I will be working on in the near future is creating more "advanced
beginner" type resources - help for people who are convinced enough
that they'll put in several hours effort to master something (Lisp/
Emacs/Slime/Hunchentoot/whatever) but not several hours just to chase
scattered and mildly applicable documentation.

Most of the documentation I've seen aims for the pre-converted
("Here's why you should use Lisp") or the tasters (i.e. Fibonacci
sequence). Once you get past those, it goes way into the much more
advanced stuff (OnLisp, CL Hyperspec, this forum, etc). I want to
fill something in the middle of these two extremes, with links to the
more advanced stuff so it's easy to dive deeper once you get the hang
of something.

-Peter

Peter Hildebrandt

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Feb 11, 2008, 10:56:02 AM2/11/08
to

Peter,

> Thanks for the positive feedback! I don't know when I'll be ready to
> do a screencast of my own - it would be really choppy with me looking
> over at my Emacs cheat sheet every time I tried to do something! What
> I will be working on in the near future is creating more "advanced
> beginner" type resources - help for people who are convinced enough
> that they'll put in several hours effort to master something (Lisp/
> Emacs/Slime/Hunchentoot/whatever) but not several hours just to chase
> scattered and mildly applicable documentation.

I fully agree, and I am glad you are addressing this issue (instead of
just complain for a while and then move on, like most of us do ;-)). If
you need help at any point, I'd be happy to help you out (and so would
be most people on c.l.l, I assume).

(Forgive me shamelessly plugging my own cause --) I see you are looking
at web apps (hunchentoot), but in case you are interested in desktop
apps as well you might want to consider looking into free GUI toolkits.
Given the recent discussion on c.l.l I have a feeling there are a lot
of low-hanging fruits out there (since there is hardly any doc at all on
the topic). You might check out clg [1], celtk [2], ltk [3], or
cells-gtk [4] as starting point.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/clg
[2] http://common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/Celtk/?root=cells
[3] http://www.peter-herth.de/ltk/
[4] http://common-lisp.net/project/cells-gtk/

A library overview might be another useful thing (similar to Daniel
Weireb's recent survey of common lisp implementations [5]). There is a
list on cliki [6], but AFAICT it is in need of some TLC.

[5] http://common-lisp.net/~dlw/LispSurvey.html
[6] http://www.cliki.net/Current%20recommended%20libraries

> Most of the documentation I've seen aims for the pre-converted
> ("Here's why you should use Lisp") or the tasters (i.e. Fibonacci
> sequence). Once you get past those, it goes way into the much more
> advanced stuff (OnLisp, CL Hyperspec, this forum, etc). I want to
> fill something in the middle of these two extremes, with links to the
> more advanced stuff so it's easy to dive deeper once you get the hang
> of something.

Exactly my experience: I read so much "Lisp is soooooo cool" praise
(The text book for my AI class, Paul Graham's essays, c.l.l etc.), got
started, and, well, tried to read On Lisp and understand the hyperspec.
If it hadn't been for a copy of Peter Seibel's PCL I would have given
up right away ;-)

So I really hope you manage to keep up your motivitation :-)

Peter

>
> -Peter

pchristensen

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Feb 11, 2008, 11:18:33 AM2/11/08
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On Feb 11, 9:56 am, Peter Hildebrandt <peter.hildebra...@gmail.com>
wrote:

Peter H,
I have been impressed by some of the GUI tools I've seen,
although that's not really what I'm looking to work on right now. It
is more evidence to support the claim that Lisp is a good programming
language for X, for any value of X. So much of the Lisp commentary
says that if you have [special, hard] problem, then Lisp is good for
you. But in reality, Lisp (esp. CL) is a great general purpose
language! PCL made me believe this, but it was a quote from PAIP that
gave me the enlightenment (see
http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/best-quote-about-lisp-thats-no-longer-valid/).
A library overview is DEFINITELY on my list (prob medium term,
since I need to use them for a while). As a .Net developer by day, no
matter how much I love other aspects of Lisp, I find it *horrifying*
to look at the cliki page or the asdf/asdf-install page and think that
this is the best we've got. It's one of the many aspects of community
building that's not exciting or sexy but would pay excruciatingly high
dividends in not turning off prospective users.
I think one of my long term goals is to create/facilitate some
sort of Lisp "distro", sort of like Lisp-in-a-Box, that includes the
best libraries, an easy way to inspect and import them, and good
documentation for it. I'd bet my front teeth all of these pieces
already exist, they just need someone to do the drudge work in
organizing and packaging them.

-Peter C

pchristensen

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Feb 11, 2008, 11:37:33 AM2/11/08
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On Feb 11, 10:18 am, pchristensen <peter.t.christen...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> gave me the enlightenment (seehttp://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/best-quote-about-lisp-thats...).

> A library overview is DEFINITELY on my list (prob medium term,
> since I need to use them for a while). As a .Net developer by day, no
> matter how much I love other aspects of Lisp, I find it *horrifying*
> to look at the cliki page or the asdf/asdf-install page and think that
> this is the best we've got. It's one of the many aspects of community
> building that's not exciting or sexy but would pay excruciatingly high
> dividends in not turning off prospective users.
> I think one of my long term goals is to create/facilitate some
> sort of Lisp "distro", sort of like Lisp-in-a-Box, that includes the
> best libraries, an easy way to inspect and import them, and good
> documentation for it. I'd bet my front teeth all of these pieces
> already exist, they just need someone to do the drudge work in
> organizing and packaging them.
>
> -Peter C

Just as a followup, since most of my time right now is spent learning
rather than doing, my immediate plans are to watch all of the movies/
screencasts I can find and do similar annotations of them. Then I can
list and rate them in one place (prospective users love stuff like
this). Right now these are the movies I have and am working on:

- Marco B's SLIME movie (done -
http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/reference-for-the-slimelispemacs-screencast/)
- Marco B's UCW "Hello World" movie (done -
http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/transcript-of-marco-barringers-ucw-hello-world-movie/)
- the Lispcast movies (http://www.lispcast.com)
- two movies from Sven Van C - the http client/server movie and
rewriting reddit (http://homepage.mac.com/svc/LispMovies/index.html)

If anyone could point out others, I'd be happy to put them in my queue
and take a look at them.

Thanks,
Peter

Victor Kryukov

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Feb 11, 2008, 12:40:56 PM2/11/08
to
pchristensen <peter.t.c...@gmail.com> writes:

> A library overview is DEFINITELY on my list (prob medium term,
> since I need to use them for a while). As a .Net developer by day, no
> matter how much I love other aspects of Lisp, I find it *horrifying*
> to look at the cliki page or the asdf/asdf-install page and think that
> this is the best we've got. It's one of the many aspects of community
> building that's not exciting or sexy but would pay excruciatingly high
> dividends in not turning off prospective users.
> I think one of my long term goals is to create/facilitate some
> sort of Lisp "distro", sort of like Lisp-in-a-Box, that includes the
> best libraries, an easy way to inspect and import them, and good
> documentation for it. I'd bet my front teeth all of these pieces
> already exist, they just need someone to do the drudge work in
> organizing and packaging them.

For Lisp-in-a-Box - have you seen clbuild[1]? It works like a charm on
most Unix-like systems and have a list of libraries that are supposed
to be good. One may face some problems using it on Windozz, but then
again - most interesting libraries are offered as a cvs/darcs/git/snv
repos nowadays so having these revision control software is almost a
prerequisite anyway.

Regards,
Victor.

[1] http://common-lisp.net/project/clbuild/

Ken Tilton

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Feb 11, 2008, 2:00:59 PM2/11/08
to

pchristensen wrote:
> I think one of my long term goals is to create/facilitate some
> sort of Lisp "distro", sort of like Lisp-in-a-Box, that includes the
> best libraries, an easy way to inspect and import them, and good
> documentation for it. I'd bet my front teeth all of these pieces
> already exist, they just need someone to do the drudge work in
> organizing and packaging them.

It varies from piece to piece. The Story of Lisp Libraries, as I believe
Mr. Weinreb recently lamented but anyone can confirm, is one of initial
enthusiasm followed by rapid abandonment. Lisp simply has not reached
that critical mass where there is always some other sucker, er,
enthusiast to take the baton when another falters. But it is getting
there (the mass, I mean).

kenny

--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/

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