

Creating a Planet Lisp mobile app in 15 minutes with mocl [video] - cag_ii
https://wukix.com/pl-screencast

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mark_l_watson
Nice video demo.

I spent some time using mocl last June and wrote about the experience
([http://markwatson.com/blog/2013-06/interesting-product-
mocl....](http://markwatson.com/blog/2013-06/interesting-product-mocl.html)) -
very cool tool.

The sweet spot for mocl would be, I think, apps with relatively simple UIs,
but with a lot of functionality that you wanted to implement in Common Lisp.
My reason for this opinion is that mocl lets you create both Android and iOS
(and now, I think, OS X) apps but the UI is specific to each platform. You
would get the most benefit if most of the complexity in your project was non-
UI code that could be reused across platforms.

~~~
orthecreedence
Something I'm toying with the idea of doing is to write a common interface in
HTML5 and having that in a webview, then using an evented architecture to
communicate with a common lisp backend. This way your logic is native/portable
and your UI is portable (although not as fast as native UI most likely).

This saves the pain of having to do some more complicated logic in JS where
there's a significant speed penalty (especially in older native browsers) with
things like crypto, but still lets you have a common interface/logic.

The only thing you'd have to write for each platform is the glue that sends
events between the web view and lisp. I guess it'd be a bit like Phonegap on
steroids if I can pull it off.

------
tsm
I guess I should be happy that there's a (seemingly) profitable CL project.
But I wish there was a free "Hobbyist License" (probably with some restriction
like not being allowed to publish in app stores).

It looks like a very appealing choice for a side project I'm about to start,
and a really fantastic project in general. But I can't justify dropping $200
just to check it out.

~~~
Crito
Yeah, this looks cool as hell, but I can't justify the expense to mess around
with it on my own time. You guys should consider another pricing tier for
hobbyist and/or non-commercial use.

------
mrottenkolber
How much of CL does it implement? Which of the big libraries do NOT run on
mocl?

~~~
lispm
It implements quite a lot of CL.

But it generates a static application. only a simple eval, no compile, no
compile-file, no load, most code information is gone, etc. etc.

If the code makes use of various dynamic features of CL, then it won't run.
Thus you have to port/write to a static variant of CL. But that's the purpose:
small, static, efficient applications.

