
Mocl – a Common Lisp implementation for mobile platforms - pavelludiq
http://wukix.com/mocl?hn
======
tomjen3
At 200 bucks a license there isn't going to be more than a couple people who
are ready to answer stack overflow questions about this, there isn't going to
be a good plugin to most IDEs, the tooling support is going to be poor in
general and there is going to be libraries for approximately nothing (yes I
know, it takes a lot less time to write them in Lisp, but it still means you
need to dive into the Oauth spec to work with Twitter, whereas I can just
download a library for Java that _works_ ).

I say this as a huge fan of Lisp and there was a time where it made sense to
buy a commercial compiler - that time has passed, because when you buy a
compiler and a new language you are also buying into an ecosystem, and the
more people that are in that ecosystem the better for you.

I can see maybe using Lisp to do some special parts of the program, but even
then there is Chicken Scheme which is free and already have a bunch of eggs
(extensions), oh and it compiles to C too.

~~~
stray
It's funny to me that people will happily spend $40 for a t-shirt, $100+ for a
pair of shoes, $300 for an ounce of weed -- but ask them for $200 for a
professional development tool and they won't budge.

I for one, think the price tag is reasonable.

~~~
evincarofautumn
The thing is that it’s easier to predict the personal value of a real-world
item. You don’t know in advance whether you’re going to get $200 of value out
of a particular development product, because there’s no reasonable standard of
comparison.

You would pay $40 for a T-shirt if it were some sort of collector’s item you
could resell. You would pay $100 for running shoes because that’s less than
$15000 for knee surgery, and you like having comfy feet. You would pay
$150–300 for an ounce of weed because you know what weed is like, and you like
it, and the price is driven up by legal issues. But what justification can you
come up with for spending $200 on what is essentially a productivity tool, if
it won’t necessarily make _you_ more productive?

~~~
stray
The same justification I use for buying books on programming: I am trying to
make myself a better programmer and I'm willing to take a gamble on myself.

But book stores, unlike the company that produces mocl, won't give my money
back if I find that the book didn't help me within the first 30 days.

So in this case, it's even a relatively safe gamble (assuming of course, that
the company does in fact, honor the 30-day money-back thing).

~~~
tbirdz
Well it depends on the book store really. For example Barnes and Noble lets
you return books up to 2 weeks after purchase. Amazon allows you to return
kindle ebooks, but I'm not sure of their policy on physical books. And of
course you could always go to your local library and see if the book is
available there.

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st3fan
Sounds like a cool project. But really, no documentation, no sample code, not
even a whitepaper? Just a Buy Now button?

It probably isn't, but it sounds like a scam. Better put out some actual code
to show that this is for real.

~~~
wukix
Hey, mocl creator here. I apologize for the minimal website. We are building
it out as quickly as we can. Bit hectic with a fixed release date we were
trying to meet (and did meet).

It is real, though. I gave a talk about it at ECLM 2013
[http://weitz.de/eclm2013/](http://weitz.de/eclm2013/).

~~~
dubcanada
Then why even release it? You're releasing a new "coding method" for mobile
platforms with no documentation, no sample code, no example applications, no
benchmark backups.

Nobody is going to hand over $200 without at least some of those items listed
above. So it just seems a bit strange to even want to release it.

I'm just saying you should slow down a little bit, take a look at
[http://www.rubymotion.com/](http://www.rubymotion.com/) for example. It's the
same sort of thing, Ruby for iOS. They provide both examples, publicly
available documentation, they even have a way to try it out yourself and see
what it looks like.

~~~
wukix
For what it's worth I just put up some code so you can see better how it
works.

~~~
mark_l_watson
So, you write the UI code in Java for Android and Objective-C for iOS, then
there is some build process for both platforms?

This seems a little awkward. A sample project setup to build for both
platforms would be useful to see.

For some types of applications, the native UI boilerplate would probably be
minimal, but for apps with complex UIs, this might add a lot of dev overhead.

Don't get me wrong though, this looks cool!!

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alexscheelmeyer
This is exactly what I am looking for and I would probably buy it if I had
some reassurance that it would actually work. Where is the docs? The sample
code? Proof of concept apps that can be downloaded from app stores? Fine print
for what is allowed in the different licenses?

~~~
wukix
Documentation, and a little bit of sample code is included in the download.
The license agreement is viewable at [http://wukix.com/mocl-license-
agreement](http://wukix.com/mocl-license-agreement).

~~~
alexscheelmeyer
With fine print I meant answer to questions like "what do I get in a
commercial license that I do not get in a personal license?" as it is written
it could mean that with a personal license you are not allowed to earn money
from apps, or it could mean that it would only cover a single developer (then
how many developers do I get for the commercial license?)

Also by actually reading that license it seems to contradict what you promise
elsewhere, it says: "All fees shall be non-refundable".

~~~
wukix
Personal just means you are buying it with your own funds and not being
reimbursed by a company. You are free to make paid apps with it. I'll work on
language to clarify.

Thanks for pointing out the contradiction there. We may be going above and
beyond what is required of us by the license, in the case of refunds. But
we'll still do so.

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contingencies
Seems to me like LISP might defend itself as a mobile language through
relative ease of GPU integration, given the parallelization possible through
OpenCL/CUDA, the difficulties of using them with traditional languages, the
mobile platforms' challenge of electrical power consumption, and the limits of
CPU-based processing.

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wslh
A little bit expensive and with no trial (no, I don't want to buy something to
return it later).

~~~
pavelludiq
It's actually cheap for a production ready(if it is) commercial cl
implementation, but I agree, a trial version is essential.

~~~
tbirdz
However, note that most commercial lisp implementations, such as LispWorks,
Allegro CL each have a free (gratis, not libre), albeit limited,
personal/noncommercial edition as well as evaluation and trial licenses for
their other versions.

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paines
Nice, and congrats to the wukix Team for their effort. However, will Apple
accept those apps in it's store? There was this guy who wrote a game in Gambit
Scheme (iirc) and was rejected back then. This seems to be the same process
here (generate C code from Lisp and glue it toether with GUI code), just with
CL.

~~~
rsanders
Apple no longer cares what language you use, as long as new code isn't
downloaded to distributed apps after installation. So it's okay to use CL as
long as there is no facility for interpretation of CL downloaded from the net.

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rcb
I'm very happy about mocl's release. Great work, and congratulations!

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muhuk
Clojure on Android:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NptqU3bqZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NptqU3bqZE)

~~~
octopus
You do realize that Clojure is not Common Lisp ?

That being said, the linked video is from 2011 (published in 2013, but from
2011).

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Mikeb85
Clojure isn't Common Lisp, but it's A Lisp, and a pretty decent one...

~~~
lispm
Clojure is incompatible with any other Lisp...

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Mikeb85
So? Is Scheme compatible with Common Lisp?

Clojure can run on any platform the JVM can (so basically anywhere except
iOS). Clojurescript can run anywhere Javascript does (so everywhere). It's a
practical, immediately useful language, that's seen significant uptake and
activity.

I like Common Lisp, but it's much easier to build useful apps in Clojure.

~~~
lispm
> I like Common Lisp, but it's much easier to build useful apps in Clojure.

Unlikely.

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yakov
From language implementer perspective your ECLM slides are lame.

Is this ECL re-packaged you charge > $ 200 for without even giving a trial
whatever? :-)

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flyingbeaver
could you only put a gist with the code of a hello world application ?

Like AppDelegate and a label with hello world in it ?

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mark_l_watson
Looks very interesting!

Some blog articles showing development of sample applications would also be
nice :-)

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regularfry
So is this based on an existing CL implementation, or a totally greenfield
project?

~~~
espadrine
It compiles to C; there is no JIT/bytecode/interpreter. It may be created from
scratch.

[http://wukix.com/dist/mocl_eclm2013.pdf](http://wukix.com/dist/mocl_eclm2013.pdf)

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jbp
Is this same as Gambit-c or Chicken scheme, but for CL?

~~~
octopus
If what you ask is if mocl compiles to C first (like Chicken and Gambit), than
yes. It is the same.

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avodonosov
interesting

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clubhi
I'm going to assume a few things here...

\- No one has ever used this. \- It is filled with bugs and has no full time
developers supporting it. \- It is extremely limited. \- The benchmarks are
completely false.

I'd buy something like this if it didn't look like a good rich scheme.

