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[pixel...@gmail.com]

I spent an afternoon porting some old Common Lisp "turtle graphics" code I wrote.

It's kind of a nice way to abstract stateful drawing. (Funfact LOGO was my first programming language in elementary school and we did a lot of turtle graphics on Apple ][e computer via LOGOWriter)

Anyway, I began a project by creating a package in the repl.
I then began pasting in my functions.

I *thought* it'd carry over with package but I must have done something wrong when running FILES? and then MAKEFILES.

I recall some voodoo around the Common Lisp packages being handled carefully.

It went quite well (as you can see below) but I'll include the file.

[Paolo Amoroso]

Your turtle graphics is pretty neat and period accurate.

This is my workflow for handling packages on Medley https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/a-single-package-common-lisp-workflow-for-medley

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Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon

[Ron Kaplan]

In your journal you have a quote from TextModules, but I don't think what it says is correct.

The forms in a file are not first all read, then evaluated.  They are evaluated in sequence as they are read.  And what is always evaluated first is the DEFINE-FILE-INFO expression at the top.

But this raises another question: should the DEFINE-FILE-ENVIRONMENT also take an optional EXTERNAL-FORMAT for the file?

On Apr 12, 2026, at 3:07 AM, Paolo Amoroso <paolo....@gmail.com> wrote:

Your turtle graphics is pretty neat and period accurate.

This is my workflow for handling packages on Medley https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/a-single-package-common-lisp-workflow-for-medley

On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 8:43 AM pixel...@gmail.com <pixel...@gmail.com> wrote:

I spent an afternoon porting some old Common Lisp "turtle graphics" code I wrote.

It's kind of a nice way to abstract stateful drawing. (Funfact LOGO was my first programming language in elementary school and we did a lot of turtle graphics on Apple ][e computer via LOGOWriter)

Anyway, I began a project by creating a package in the repl.
I then began pasting in my functions.

I *thought* it'd carry over with package but I must have done something wrong when running FILES? and then MAKEFILES.

I recall some voodoo around the Common Lisp packages being handled carefully.

It went quite well (as you can see below) but I'll include the file.

<Screenshot_20260411_234103.png>

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Paolo Amoroso | Blog | Mastodon

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[Larry Masinter]

The forms in a file are not first all read, then evaluated.  They are evaluated in sequence as they are read.  

That might be a good approximation, but when you throw in compiling and other file package manipulations, the truth is somewhat more complicated, because you are transforming what you read into somethinig the compiler will emit compiled definitions and expressions. Manipulating packages in the middle of a file won't work well with LOADFNS/GETDEF even if not compiling.

I wish there was a way to simplify this for users, because this is even more confusing than EVAL and QUOTE and backquote....

https://LarryMasinter.net  https://interlisp.org

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lispcore/EFA9D415-17D1-443D-9326-52855FDD88FD%40post.harvard.edu.

[pixel...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the guidance. :)

So if I follow, it seems the source of the quote in Paolo's post was too optimistic?
Is the process outlined on the blog still the way to go anyway?

I do like the notion of turtle drawing, especially with an open ended "drawing" function.
It's actually not too far off from how CNC works, so in theory I could make the turtles not only draw but generate CNC GCODE to file as a side effect.

- Ryan