
Lisp Hackers: Zach Beane - wglb
http://lisp-univ-etc.blogspot.com/2012/03/lisp-hackers-zach-beane.html
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mark_l_watson
Good interview with Zach - I didn't realize that he lived in Maine.

I have mostly switched my Lisp development from Common Lisp to Clojure because
that is what a customer wanted and now I am hooked on Clojure, but when do I
use Common Lisp Zach's Quicklisp package management and installation system is
very nice to use - I wish he had written it many years ago. In case you
haven't tried Quicklisp yet: <http://www.quicklisp.org/>

~~~
mark_l_watson
BTW, if you work on OS X, and you want to get a good "IDE like" Common Lisp
environment setup quickly, just install Clozure Common Lisp from Apple's
AppStore (free), install Quicklisp, and set an alias like:

alias ClozureCL='/Applications/Clozure\ CL.app/Contents/MacOS/dx86cl64 &'

so you can quickly start the IDE in any directory.

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kaiwetzel
My road to lisp has not been without bumps but after initially being inspired
by pg's essays and reading the highly motivating _Practical Common Lisp_ [1],
quicklisp has greatly lowered the barrier to write real programs for me,
installing packages is really easy now, if they are in quicklisp!

Cool interview with Zach, he's also extremely active in the #lisp IRC channel,
can't thank him enough.

Regarding Clozure CL pointed out by Mark Watson: there was an "end user" app
(though tiny) announced written with CCL available though the mac app store:
Picture Window [2] Learning Common Lisp and Cocoa at the same time is very
exciting, I hope to see more apps like that in the future (working on one
myself).

[1] <http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/>

[2] [http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/picture-
window/id507262984?mt...](http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/picture-
window/id507262984?mt=12)

~~~
kinleyd
Like Zach and you, pg's essays (plus Steve Yegge's rants), influenced me to
learn Lisp.

Great interview. I'm on Arc, but will add SBCL because of Zach. :) Also, I
remember Steve Yegge writing about how he barked up the wrong tree with Scheme
(for purity) when he realized that Common Lisp may be crufty but was what got
things done: [http://langnostic.blogspot.com/2010/09/yegge-strikes-back-
fr...](http://langnostic.blogspot.com/2010/09/yegge-strikes-back-from-
grave.html)

~~~
Inaimathi
Just to clarify; I am not in fact Steve Yegge (though I've been told I have a
similar writing style), just a young lisper who read his essays.

~~~
kinleyd
Yes, you do have a similar writing style. From my list of Steve Yegge
bookmarks, I was actually thinking of this one, [http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptab...](http://steve-
yegge.blogspot.com/2006/04/lisp-is-not-acceptable-lisp.html), where he says
this:

"Problem 1: Which Lisp? Sorry, folks, but you can't trivialize this one. Let's
say I'm a new would-be Lisper, just finished walking down that long damn Road,
and now that I'm here, I'm ready to start using it. Which "it" should I use?
The answer is "it depends", and that's pretty unfortunate, because right there
you've just lost users. With Python or Ruby or Java, you've only got one
language to choose from. Or at least you can be comfortable that there's a
single canonical version, and the rest (e.g. Jython) are highly experimental
territory.

Pick Scheme, and you have to pick a Scheme. Pick Common Lisp, and you have to
pick a Common Lisp. Heck, there are even two or three flavors of Emacs-Lisp
out there.

Most newcomers eventually (and independently) decide the same thing: Scheme is
a better language, but Common Lisp is the right choice for production work. CL
has more libraries, and the implementations are somewhat more compatible than
Scheme implementations, particularly with respect to macros. "

Since the full rant is tough on Lisp (and I like Lisp), and since you'd quoted
most of the above, I was quick to pull the trigger on which to quote. Thanks
for pointing it out.

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derrida
"I don't write scripts that I call from the command line, I write functions
that I call from the REPL, and use the slime and Emacs environment to create
and interact with data". <3

~~~
kaiwetzel
A nice addition to my slime/Emacs environment (which is really a rediscovery
for me after almost 10 years in IDEs like Eclipse) was iimage[1]. It converts
image file name in the REPL to inline images, makes it very easy to prototype
functions that create some graphics. E.g. I use vecto[2] (also written by
Zach!) to produce a disk usage visualization and it shows up directly below
the function call in Emacs :D

[1] <http://www.netlaputa.ne.jp/~kose/Emacs/iimage.html>

[2] <http://www.xach.com/lisp/vecto/> or (ql:quickload 'vecto)

~~~
aerique
Oh, iimage is a great find thanks!

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ScottBurson
Great to see Zach getting some airtime. He's done a wonderful thing for Common
Lisp users everywhere. Quicklisp's simplicity of use is deceptive. There were
at least two previous attempts to create a "CPAN for Common Lisp" -- I'm
thinking of ASDF-Install and Daniel Herring's LibCL, and I think there were
more I've forgotten -- but none of them were as painless as Quicklisp.

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agumonkey
If only he had the time to make screencasts of his day to day workflow (beside
quicklisp demos) <o/

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prtamil
he is the guy who changed common lisp eco system. After quicklisp nobody ever
gonna write abandonware. Thanks Mr. Beane.

