I like History but I'll comment about Lisp in web apps today, if I may. We have a choice of web servers and web libraries (https://github.com/CodyReichert/awesome-cl/#web-development), and we live in happy times where HTMX or Datastar are great fit for Lisp -as with any stack. See these Datastar examples built in CL: https://github.com/fsmunoz/datastar-cl I use and like the Mito ORM too, which comes with automatic migrations and, since last year, a composable query engine (SxQL).
Here you will find some screenshots of some of today's web applications built in CL: http://lisp-screenshots.org/ and here an opinionated tutorial: https://web-apps-in-lisp.github.io/ One example: ScreenShotBot https://screenshotbot.io/ a successful open-source product and company. It now replaced Facebook's automatic screenshot testing tool (source: their blog). So, web apps in Lisp are possible -with a right amount of learning time and elbow grease.
The incremental development and interactive top-level are still precious and unmatched.
The productivity high folks get from using tools like Claude Code are the same as what one gets from learning a Lisp and using something like Emacs as the editor.
There is obviously a difference in capability, but do the cost differences scale linearly?
Maybe when the party is over, the lost will yearn for the parentheses to get just a shadow of that high back.
Tell that to all the AI users then because that's a ridiculous assertion that even some notable fraction use it for the purpose you're talking about, much less all. Most people simply use it for information, very few treat it like a person.
Why? The creator of ELIZA tried that, it didn't work then, why would it now?
We've had code generation tools for decades, abstracting over code generation has been a solved problem for a long time, and as it happens, this is not in itself a very rewarding practice except for a small segment of professional developers that get a kick out of the elegance of some technique or other.
The new thing about these chat bots is that they provide a feeling of being seen and appreciated, and unlike a coworker they seemingly carry very little risk of embarrassment, pain and so on while they also require very little effort compared to human relations.
No, it's that they work extremely well at finding the specific information you're looking for. The vast majority of for example developers aren't using it to bond with a chatbot but to get work done.
- why nothing on the "compiler" line? Everytime you load a snippet or a file with SBCL, it compiles it (to machine code). There's also compile-file.
- interpreter: likewise, all code is compiled by default with SBCL, not interpreted, even in the REPL. To use the interpreter, we must do this: https://github.com/lisp-tips/lisp-tips/issues/52
- command line program: the racket cell shows the use of -e (eval), the same can be done with any CL implementation.
- since the string split line introduces cl-ppcre, one could mention cl-str :D (plug) (much terser join, trim, concat etc)
- ah ok, for dates and times, flattening a list, hash-table literals… we need more libraries.
Since you are also commenting libraries, I think that FSet (1) for inmutable memory,and perhaps a comparison with clojure, and the quick-lisp package manager could be mentioned.
Hash-table literals are covered by (among others):
- Serapeum
- golden-utils
- rutils
- make-hash
Though now I'm wondering which libraries would make for a proper canonical extended core... asdf, uiop (comes with asdf, so naturally), alexandria, bordeaux-threads, cffi, cl-ppcre, str, local-time, trivia,... and maybe fset? (although I personally prefer Sycamore's naming conventions)
...maybe also fivem (although I personally prefer parachute) and hunchentoot.
Someone threw out a Zed LSP for Common Lisp with LLMs help: https://github.com/etyurkin/zed-cl It requires heavy compilation of the wasm toolchain so I finally didn't try it. It seems it doesn't have a lisp debugger.
Here you will find some screenshots of some of today's web applications built in CL: http://lisp-screenshots.org/ and here an opinionated tutorial: https://web-apps-in-lisp.github.io/ One example: ScreenShotBot https://screenshotbot.io/ a successful open-source product and company. It now replaced Facebook's automatic screenshot testing tool (source: their blog). So, web apps in Lisp are possible -with a right amount of learning time and elbow grease.
The incremental development and interactive top-level are still precious and unmatched.