

Lisp In Summer Projects: Coding Competition - tsm
http://lispinsummerprojects.org/

======
pauldelany
"Q: Why can't citizens of Cuba, Iran, Myanmar (Burma), North Korea, Sudan,
Syria, Brazil, Italy, Quebec, and Saudi Arabia participate? A: Lisp In Summer
Projects is similar to Google's Code-It, which is where the requirement
originated. Lisp In Summer Projects does not have access to Google's cadre of
lawyers and cannot invite legal risk to ourselves, our associates or our
sponsors."

\-- what's up with Brazil, Italy and Quebec that they're on this list, can
anyone tell me?

~~~
edran
This is the second time I see Italian people banned from a coding contest -
the first being Google Code-in, but they had problems with paying under-age
students [0]. Here instead you are allowed only if >18 years old, so I assume
the problem lies in our monolithic and bloated taxes regulations.

Sigh.

[0] <http://goo.gl/vnzL3>

~~~
aidenn0
From the site FAQ, they just took the list from code-in without having a
lawyer vet it.

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duggieawesome
This sounds fantastic. I've been going through SICP, and this is a great
outlet to try my hand a real project in Scheme.

~~~
krat0sprakhar
Same here! Off-topic - Which Scheme dialect are you using to practice the
SICP? I'm using Racket!

~~~
jeffwass
I've also been going through SICP, using racket. However, I've been using Neil
van Dyke's SICP-compliant support package, so I feel my use is closer to SICP
scheme than racket (if that claim even makes sense)

I use this line at the top of my scripts :

#lang planet neil/sicp

See here: <http://www.neilvandyke.org/racket-sicp/>

~~~
dizzystar
Yes, it makes absolute sense, there are quite a few things in SICP that aren't
"legal" in Racket.

Using the Van Dyke plugin is an absolute must for SICP on Racket, IMO.

------
tekacs
> You're free to create whatever you would like, such as:

> \- ...

> \- Heroku and Google App Engine

Creating a pair of PAAS hosting providers? Now that _would_ be impressive.

More seriously, the wording could well be revised a little for those who
aren't familiar with the services/those without common sense/those as pedantic
as am I (the latter sounds like a set which would overlap soundly with LISPers
:P).

Looks great, though! :)

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zhemao
Oh god, it's a recursive acronym where the first word can also be an acronym
for something else. I'm not sure what you would call that. An ambiguously
recursive algorithm?

~~~
kostya-kow
It would've been mutually recursive if Lisp (language) stood for something
else which referenced Lisp (contest). But it doesn't, so you probably
discovered a new type of recursive acronyms.

Hurd is an example of mutually recursive acronym:

"The GNU Hurd project is named with a mutually recursive acronym: "Hurd"
stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons", and "Hird" stands for "Hurd of
Interfaces Representing Depth.""

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_acronym>

------
fabriceleal
This was previously called Lisp in _Small_ Projects.

This link redirects to Lisp in Summer Projects:
<http://lispinsmallprojects.org/>

Previous _discussion_ : <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5564828>

~~~
sokoloff
That discussion link isn't particularly enlightening. (0 comments)

~~~
fabriceleal
... hence the italic.

Nonetheless, predates this link :)

Shameless plug: I submitted the old link.

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S4M
They don't consider Emacs Lisp as a Lisp !? Writing a(nother) cool plugin for
emacs should be worth at least some praise.

~~~
tjr
From the FAQ:

 _Q: Can I use language X?

A: If it is Common Lisp, Clojure, ClojureScript, Scheme or any recognized
dialect of Lisp, then yes. If it smells like a LISP and contains the word
'lisp', then probably. _

~~~
tekacs
So... anyone here up for Arc, then? ;)

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chimeracoder
> Development must be in LISP (typically Common Lisp, Clojure or Scheme) or
> English.

Shouldn't that be _and_ English?

Further down:

> All Entries must be coded in LISP, typically this is Common Lisp, Clojure or
> Scheme. The determination of exactly what is a LISP is up to the discretion
> of the Judges. Haskell, Erlang and Smalltalk are not LISPs and will be
> disqualified.

> All Entries must be in English unless otherwise specified.

~~~
brudgers
It's Lisp, so writing about Lisp rather than in Lisp is potentially awesome,
e.g. the ideas page lists "serious documentation projects" and "Maccarthy
fanfic" as possible entry points.

One of the distinguishing features of Lisp is that people write love songs to
it.

~~~
agilescale
Quality trolling. A++, would read again.

~~~
gcr
Being serious for a moment, quality documentation is an area where many lisps
could use improvement.

~~~
agilescale
Yes, I've seen it Clojure, where the documentation is extensive, giving great
coverage to its standard library... but still haves you reading the source and
searching the web for examples after reading the description, especially when
speaking about macros (so... does this receive a vector? Does it take its
arguments as a list, or what? A mixture of both?)

Racket goes full in the other direction, to a fault, even though it's much
preferable.Racket's documentation is at times hard to wade through because
_it's so extensive_. You have to scroll through the treatises and descriptions
of options to find an example usage which will get you out quickly, but it's,
for once, all there in the manual.

~~~
gcr
Haha, I actually really like how Racket does it and consider them a great
example to follow:

\- Racket's documentation is all on your local machine. Stuck without an
Internet connection? F1, and you're searching your own documnetation index.

\- Everything -- _everything_ \-- is hypelinked. If you see a blue word in a
code example, even the ones on the front page of <http://racket-lang.org/> ,
you can click on it and jump straight to that function's contract.

But I agree, I wish there were a better way to jump straight to examples when
you're looking at a specific function's documentation. It's confusing having
the completely separate "Guide" and "Reference" halves of the documentation
with no links between them.

~~~
brudgers
My gripe with Racket's documentation is that there is no middle ground between
tutorials designed to showcase features rather than explain how Racket does
and doesn't work and computer generated auto-docs. The tutorials are more
geared toward selling the language to beginners, while the rest of the
documentation is bereft of illustrative examples and editorial discussion.

------
zackzackzack
How does one go about signing up?

~~~
bgruber
sorry about this. i think the HN post caught us slightly off guard. we'll have
more details real soon now.

~~~
muuh-gnu
When are you going to give up the capitalized acronym LISP? It has the same
archaic vibe and makes you want to code in it as much as in FORTRAN. Just call
it Lisp.

~~~
ogdoad
The language name is actually "lisp", it's the enlightened converts'
enthusiasm that causes them to shout it from the treetops. One would guess.

