HELLO! My #opensource #lisp game Kandria is now out on GOG with a 70% discount (highest ever!) to go along with it:
HELLO! My #opensource #lisp game Kandria is now out on GOG with a 70% discount (highest ever!) to go along with it:
@screwlisp @ramin_hal9001 @momo
It's a tiny point, but I was Project Editor for the ANSI CL spec, meaning I was the last to have my fingers on the keys editing it and had final responsibility for a document that then a whole community approved. There was lots feeding into my work there.
Steele's work on CLTL is actually a base document even though the work Kathy Chapman did successfully refactored much of that into dictionary entries. I did a lot of work smoothing the result of that. Pieces came in from various committees on objects, iteration, conditions, etc. I had a hand on the conditions document that was later integrated and then again in the final result.
It's worth people glancing through the acknowledgment section in CLHS to see all the people who did things of various kinds.
But, and this is the reason I started this comment: I didn't exactly author the HyperSpec. The ANSI CL document was already authored. I conceived and implemented and got approvals for deploying the code that translated the ANSI CL spec (a raw TeX, not even LaTeX document) into HTML. One important aspect of the program that did that is that it did NOT rewrite what was in the spec. That's so you have confidence you don't have to go get the spec to find out the real truth. It's more akin to having exported something to PDF, but in reverse, destroying the pretty typography of the ANSI CL spec and leaving the kind of clumsy but more versatile HTML in its place.
In fact, I did try hard to resist people's suggestions that I use fancy features of HTML that were emerging. I was worried they might not be stable and I wanted the resulting document to use things that I thought would be stable over time. So it was an exercise in minimalism, which gives it a kind of dated look, but for a reason.
But you said I "wrote the hyperspec" and technically I created it, by writing code that created it. But it feels funny to me to say I wrote it. It is not a work of authorship, it is a work of rendering. I will say that the code does massive work to infer hyperlinks when they were not there, and so that "rendering" is a more sophisticated rendering than typical engines. In some cases, there are queries I wanted to ask and I compiled them into specific static pages that ask the question so you can just click to the question and then to where the question would take you. Still, I count that as rendering.
I don't know. Some might still call that authorship. But is the author of a compiler the author of the programs it compiles? I'm thinking not. The thing that makes the HyperSpec is more of a compiler. I am OK being an author (or co-author, really) of the ANSI CL spec. But that little bit of terminological shift in discussing the HyperSpec maker keeps the bookkeeping straight for me. Maybe it's also a reminder to people that there are interesting things that can be done in the world even from documents or materials not specifically made to be inputs.
The application of imagination is more than authorship, not to denigrate authorship. CLHS, I guess in my mind, is maybe also more a work of art than a document. That it is just text yet comes to life is part of the work of art that is a web browser, for similar reasons. Another work of art those are.
My mind's analogy web is flagging a weird cross-reference that I hope will stretch your brain differently about what counts as technology and what is mere authorship. We think of technology as fancy gadgets, but really it's just working with available tools. The technology of yesteryear was built from different stuff than now. What matters is the clever use of available capability. So I'll just leave this cross-reference without explanation as an example of something I think is similar use of technology to solve a social problem. Maybe you'll agree or maybe not about whether this is even a valid example or what to name the category that both CLHS and this article exist in, but for now I'll just say that they seem related to me. :)
@kentpitman
I really like
> CLHS, I guess in my mind, is maybe also more a work of art than a document.
as a #lisp quote!
Aside, I guess on the lispworks site it says this about the hyperspec:
The Common Lisp HyperSpec was prepared (1996) and revised (2005) by Kent Pitman. As Project Editor of X3J13 Kent Pitman managed the completion of the document which became the ANSI Common Lisp Standard.
@ramin_hal9001 @momo
@screwlisp @kentpitman I’m just reading up on the MIT-Scheme condition system. Recent efforts to standardize this are defined in SRFI-255: “Restarting conditions”.
An older standards condition systems in Scheme was defined in SRFI-35: “Conditions”. And #Guile users can use the Guile implementation of SRFI-35 to make use of it.
I wish I had known about this two weeks ago when we first started talking about it on the #LispyGopherClimate show, but better late than never, I guess.
#tech #software #Lisp #CommonLisp #Scheme #SchemeLang #R7RS #MITScheme #Guile #GuileScheme
Lem editor news: it just got the one shortcut that makes me a 10x developer: `lisp-call-defun` bound (as in Slime) to C-c C-y.
https://lem-project.github.io/usage/common_lisp/#call-the-form-at-point-lisp-call-defun-c-c-c-y
(this one is strangely absent from Sly)
@ramin_hal9001 @kentpitman @screwlisp I used to have so much fun playing with the condition system in Common Lisp some years ago. Can't wait to use this in Chicken Scheme or Guile Scheme 
@momo cool!
Well then, please have a listen to the episodes of the #LispyGopherClimate podcast that me, @kentpitman and @screwlisp did these past few weeks:
#tech #software #Lisp #CommonLisp #Scheme #SchemeLang #R7RS #MITScheme #Guile #GuileScheme
Lem editor news: it just got the one shortcut that makes me a 10x developer: `lisp-call-defun` bound (as in Slime) to C-c C-y.
https://lem-project.github.io/usage/common_lisp/#call-the-form-at-point-lisp-call-defun-c-c-c-y
(this one is strangely absent from Sly)
@screwlisp @kentpitman I’m just reading up on the MIT-Scheme condition system. Recent efforts to standardize this are defined in SRFI-255: “Restarting conditions”.
An older standards condition systems in Scheme was defined in SRFI-35: “Conditions”. And #Guile users can use the Guile implementation of SRFI-35 to make use of it.
I wish I had known about this two weeks ago when we first started talking about it on the #LispyGopherClimate show, but better late than never, I guess.
#tech #software #Lisp #CommonLisp #Scheme #SchemeLang #R7RS #MITScheme #Guile #GuileScheme
Daniel Kochmański @jackdaniel is revising the manual of McCLIM, starting from the chapters on the development history and getting started.
From this I learned that in 2026 it has been 10 years since he took over maintenance of McCLIM. Thanks to Daniel and all contributors for their work on this great implementation of the Common Lisp Interface Manager GUI toolkit.
Daniel Kochmański @jackdaniel is revising the manual of McCLIM, starting from the chapters on the development history and getting started.
From this I learned that in 2026 it has been 10 years since he took over maintenance of McCLIM. Thanks to Daniel and all contributors for their work on this great implementation of the Common Lisp Interface Manager GUI toolkit.
A new CLX release: https://github.com/sharplispers/clx/releases/tag/0.7.8
Thanks to @bmansurov for refactoring demos.
A new CLX release: https://github.com/sharplispers/clx/releases/tag/0.7.8
Thanks to @bmansurov for refactoring demos.
In #Clojure, if you query a set for a member, and that member is present, that member is returned:
user=> (#{:a 😜 :c} :a)
:a
The traditional #Lisp function ASSOC has the signature
(ASSOC store key) => value
where store is assumed to be a list of (key . value) dotted pairs.
In the experimental Lisp I'm working on, I want you to be able to put maps onto assoc lists as well as (key . value) pairs, which raises the questions...
/Continued
so, apparently hacking #scheme is going to get even more fun with B.L.U.E., a sane, extendable, lisp-y l, agnostic build system and #Ares, the interactive hacking tool we always sensed was missing from our work. Yes, we now have insightful backtraces in #guile!
The future has come!
https://codeberg.org/lapislazuli/blue
https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/guile-ares-rs
#guix #fosdem #fosdem2026 #blue #lisp #repl #buildsystem #reproducibility #hacking #fun #coding #interactiveprogramming
I still have to wrap my head around @screwlisp ‘s “deep learning in #Lisp” post <https://screwlisp.small-web.org/fundamental/a-better-deep-learning-algorithm/>, but I’m already hyped up:
• I we can do deep learning without numbers, only doing symbol/tree transformations
• And if there are systems that specialize on tree transformations and don’t have native numbers
• Then we can use these systems to do deep learning without actually needing any of the “modern” scaffolding for it!
Things that come to mind:
• @june@june@social.nouveau.community ‘s Modal and maybe Nova?
• @neauoire ‘s experiments with neural nets as embedded notepad connections
• ed(1) as a symbolic playground. C’mon, have you thought I’d go even one post without mentioning ed? Hell no! I’m going to understand this symbolic neural nets thing and start doing deep learning in ed! 🤩
so, apparently hacking #scheme is going to get even more fun with B.L.U.E., a sane, extendable, lisp-y l, agnostic build system and #Ares, the interactive hacking tool we always sensed was missing from our work. Yes, we now have insightful backtraces in #guile!
The future has come!
https://codeberg.org/lapislazuli/blue
https://git.sr.ht/~abcdw/guile-ares-rs
#guix #fosdem #fosdem2026 #blue #lisp #repl #buildsystem #reproducibility #hacking #fun #coding #interactiveprogramming
🔥 Try #commonlisp 100% in the browser, using JupyterLite, a WASM-powered Jupyter:
=> https://wiki3-ai.github.io/jscl-kernel/
src: https://github.com/wiki3-ai/jscl-kernel
seen on: https://github.com/jscl-project/jscl/discussions/568
JupyterLite: https://github.com/jupyterlite/jupyterlite
JSCL is seeing a lot of activity. It has CLOS, complete FORMAT (ported from CMUCL), very decent LOOP support.
