
Common Lisp Brazil Community - lerax
https://commonlispbr.github.io/
======
reikonomusha
Super excited to see this! Activity around Common Lisp has been effervescent
as of late. The Amsterdam Lisp group just met, the Bay Area Lisp group is
active, CL is kicking in Japan, and now this.

Common Lisp may be old, and may not have adopted the fads it couldn’t have
foreseen, but it’s still a modern, efficient, high-productivity language that
has proven decade after decade its ability to cut through some of the most
difficult programming problems, from OS’s on custom hardware to quantum
computers.

~~~
hardwaresofton
I have alot of projects that I want to work on coming up, and every time I
start them, I always want to pick a lisp, but never end up doing it because I
just can't find the support that I expect and hope to be present. This might
be a bit of a chicken and egg problem, here are some of the things that put me
off:

1\. The JVM (in the case of clojure) -- the apps I want to write I want to
statically compile easily, and have very light footprints (at least at the
lower limit). I always wince when trying to deploy a JVM application (elastic
beanstalk, graylog, etc).

2\. Support for new emerging tech/libraries like gRPC and swagger -- yes I
could always write my own software for this, but it just isn't a smart use of
my time. Even haskell has easy support for stuff like grpc. Haskell is also
really easy for me to trust due to just how safe the language makes me feel.

3\. Established and "boring" choice for web server frameworks

4\. Just choosing between SBCL (which seems to be the best choice for CL),
racket, and scheme (I've done projects in clojure before and it was very
enjoyable but I just don't want to bring in the JVM/get involved in that
ecosystem)

5\. Easy cross-platform binary generation (I saw buildapp and get that I can
make FASl binaries, but what if I wanted to compile for armv6 easily from a
non-arm system?)

The only language I can imagine that has the performance, simplicity, and
deployability benefits that I want seems to be Golang these days. Rust would
theoretically also be an option (big fan of increase in expressiveness and de-
factor memory safety), but it still seems

Can you tell me why I'm wrong? I really do love lisps, and I know that it's
got the expressiveness that fits like a glove (that you made) and with
dialects like SBCL the native speed that I want.

The answer may very well be that seeming lack of libraries/resources is my
"fault", in the chickend-and-egg sort of sense (someone like me who's
interested in the libraries that don't exist in the form I want yet ISN'T
investing into the tooling).

[EDIT] - Yeah, just writing this post has made me feel bad I think I'm going
to get back into writing common lisp on my next project.

~~~
can3p
Thank you for the comment! It's definitely not your fault, but more a
community fault and general lack of momentum.

Common lisp implementations indeed lag behind mainstream languages in many
occasions, and it's really hard to justify it as a choice for something like
straightforward web app compared to other combinations like python + django
that provide a lot to get up and running very easily + lots of robust
libraries.

What's necessary on my opinion is to create a community effort to pinpoint all
missing pieces in ecosystem regarding practical applications like webservices
and address them by creating corresponding libraries event if it means direct
port at the moment.

------
Jach
Anyone want to give a summary of what this community is about for those who
don't speak Portuguese? I wonder how many upvotes are just because it has
"Common Lisp" in the title...

~~~
4lch3m1st
I was going to answer, but the other comments already did :) Though most of it
right now is just learning material for people new to Common Lisp, the project
is actually for lispers of any level.

~~~
Jach
Yeah I initially gathered it was a list of links but was sort of curious if
there was meetups / community events / hackathons described somewhere that
would be interesting to look at the output of someday! e.g. The Bay Area Lisp
group posts videos of talks their members give, the Lisp game jams, and so on
are very interesting for someone trying to squeeze in more CL learning... But
since others mentioned a Telegram link (and now that I look at it a bit more
carefully I see the IRC link right below too) I hope such things will become a
reality in the future. :)

I have no idea what the relationship between Brazil and Portugal is like these
days but I wonder if it'd be possible to get members/resources/support/tips
from SISCOG? I read somewhere that they might be the biggest Common Lisp
employer, though I have no idea if they do anything for the broader
community...

------
erikj
Are there Telegram groups for English-speaking Common Lisp users?

~~~
4lch3m1st
Hello. I'm afraid the main focus is to join all Brazilian or Portuguese-
speaking lispers in one place, but we're not really supporting English-
speaking ones, though you're very welcome to join (if you try keeping stuff in
Portuguese on our chat). But in any case, since most CL learning links are in
English, you can also contribute by sending us material that you find relevant
for the language on GitHub.

