Blog

(a bunch of stuff in a pot)

REPL

The Chicken csi REPL is appalling after using some nice REPLs, it doesn't even have history by default. I couldn't reliably get non-GNU readline-likes to work, so:

% chicken-install -sudo readline
% cat >~/.csirc
(use readline)
(current-input-port (make-readline-port))
(install-history-file #f "/.csi_history")
^D

So at least now it has the usual up/down/emacs-like keys.

Long fucking ways from the old Symbolics LISP Machines. Why don't we have environments like that anymore? Why is everyone content to just use fucking emacs (I've never been emacsulated) or other editor, and a boring REPL? DrRacket is just a REPL that destroys its memory every time you edit code, and it's the most graphically advanced LISP-type environment. And this is why I still just use Atom with Symbols Tree View (even though it thinks variable definitions are functions), and copy-paste into iTerm if I want to test something.

Value Unpacking

Not having nice R6RS macros for this, and unwilling to fight with classic macros, I've been using values to unpack lists into variables, and because I can never remember the exact syntax, I made this cheat-sheet:

(define a '(1 2 3))
(define b '(4 5 6))
;; then one of these:
(define-values (x y z) (apply values a)) (printf "~s,~s,~s\n" x y z)
(set!-values (x y z) (apply values b)) (printf "~s,~s,~s\n" x y z)
(let-values [[(x y z) (apply values a)] [(q r s) (apply values b)]] (printf "qrs:~s,~s,~s xyz:~s,~s,~s\n" q r s x y z))

Probably not efficient, but better than car, cadr, caddr, etc. Maybe I should move all my list-structures into vectors, but then I'd still have to convert them to lists half the time. Here's where Python is the programmer's best friend, even if it is 10,000x slower:

a = (1, 2, 3)
x, y, z = a
print(f"{x},{y},{z}")

Why Did LISP Fail?

How did a more advanced language with better tools just die off commercially, and now if you want to work in it, you have to cobble together a bunch of half-broken shit?

I think there's 3 reasons:

1. It's hard and ugly. It may be logically compelling, but when you see a page of parens your brain panics and looks for a place to hide.
2. Companies value the fake productivity of thousands of lines of C, Java, or Swift (aka C++2020) code more than having safety, security, and correct reasoning. Who cares if millions of people will suffer and possibly die from your code, as long as you can ship TODAY?
3. A lot of LISP "hackers" are insufferable douchebags, both old beardy fuckers who've been doing it for 50 years and mewling children who learned it last week. Every new variant makes the older contingent more angry at even seeing a mention of it, and the sneering fetuses think whatever variant they learned is Divine Wisdom, rather than just an engineering tool that may need to be improved.