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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

The attitude in this screenshot may explain why Lisp environments don't take off:

https://common-lisp.net/project/mcclim/static/media/screensh...

Calling C++ programs "cancerous abstractions" is simply funny. I'm sure even C++ programmers agree :) It's NOT "why Lisp environments don't take off".

That guy's face on the screen is creeeepy af though...

I've been a C++ developer for a couple of decades. It's funny and nicer than a lot of things we say about the language ourselves. And waaaaay nicer than what the C guys say. :-)

That's Gabriel Laddel's screenshot, he is quite an abrasive fellow but he doesn't represent the entire community.

I don't see it yet. The "Destkop" typo? toy for Smalltalk? cancerous abstraction (C++)?

That guy continues to find ways to damage every project he touches, one way or another.

Parent is downvoted but look at the screenshot. That is indeed a bad attitude and it's on the official project site. This does _not_ help.

You are right, sorry about that. I've used screenshots provided by someone and didn't take a close look at each of them (I already had one report like that and taken action immedietely).

If you find anything else, please let me know, I'm one of the maintainers. Picture removed.

Great, I really wish this project all the best.

There is still some snark in the screenshots on the site but nothing I found too off putting.

That was fast! Thanks for taking the concern seriously.

It may seem like a small thing, but content that literally says "we expect you to already know Emacs and Symbolics, if you used something else, piss off" is a major turn-off.

Oh yeah Lisp is the only community with hostile individuals. Every sizeable community has such people and one must know to avoid them. It's hostile in itself to derive ideas about communities themselves from indiviudals' behaviour.

If it's in the project's official screenshots (under the heading "Get excited"), it's not unreasonable to assume that it's representative of the project community.

Lisp's hostile reputation dates back to when most language discussions happened on comp.lang.lisp on Usenet and the toxic environment created by Erik Naggum and his acolytes. It's a hard reputation to shake, apparently, seeing that it's a subject that still comes up decades later.

if you're talking about https://web.archive.org/web/20170820092504im_/https://common..., then it literally did not say that. let me quote literally:

Given that you lisp, you're probably familiar with Emacs or the symbolics lisp machine. This environment shares some of its modality with these systems and is modeled (rather imperfectly), in their image.

that's too optimistic for sure, but how is it a turn-off without you putting different words into author's mouth?

You conveniently left out the preceding sentence which is of the format "X, Y and Z can stop reading now" -- and whoever is left is assumed to already know Emacs or Symbolics.

no, i very narrowly responded to the content of your comment, because no matter how much of dick the guy may be (i have no idea but the screenshot certainly gave away a very imature impression), you, instead of attacking that preceding sentence, instead twisted the next one unfavorably.

your claim literally says "we expect you to already know Emacs and Symbolics, if you used something else, piss off" is bullshit, figuratively speaking. i just wanted to point out that your high horse of niceness is not so high or nice if you need to lean on slandering people. that's all. i don't know the guy or the software.

Gabriel is a buffoon of the highest order, and tries to sneak his bad attitude into nearly everything he ever contributes to.

Please don't defend him, especially via these kind of tactical omissions.

Symbolics is long dead, and Emacs lost the edtor wars. A modern developer coming to Lisp would much rather use Sublime, Visual Studio Code, or even vim with appropriate plugins. This set of assumptions is increasingly invalid.

"Emacs lost the edtor wars."

The editor wars are not over yet. Emacs is still winning over new users, as is vim, and both are growing and improving all the time.

"A modern developer coming to Lisp would much rather use Sublime, Visual Studio Code, or even vim with appropriate plugins."

They might until they see the power of emacs tools like slime and paredit.

Who are you to speak for everyone? Did vim users and emacs users meet on ye old battlefield and now the emacs users have to slink off in defeat and delete their emacs configs because more people use vim?

In reality there is plenty of support for both to continue.

What was it?

https://web.archive.org/web/20170820092504/https://common-li...

It was this: https://web.archive.org/web/20170820092504im_/https://common...

Not really offensive unless you identify as Smalltalk (called a "toy"), or C++ (called a "cancerous abstraction"), but kind of shrill and not a good way to present the project.

I just started learning Common Lisp a few days ago, actually, and I agree that this isn't a good way to present this project. I've never used Emacs (I'm been using vi for 13 years now), and regarding Lisp machines, I'm very curious about them but in 2017 I have the slightest idea where I could try one out; unlike Smalltalk where there are open-source Smalltalk VMs such as Squeak, there are no open-source Lisp OSes; plus, Lisp machines themselves are expensive collectors items. (I wish there were some type of computer lab available where one could try out old machines that had a tremendous impact on computing history such as the Xerox Alto and Symbolics Lisp machines running Genera, but I digress.) It would be nice if the IP issues regarding Symbolics Genera were resolved and if the IP owners open-sourced the OS; there are enough interesting and unique ideas in Genera for it to still have an impact on the computing landscape despite its age.

Mezzano is a open source Lisp OS: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

Please enter #clnoobs and #lisp at freenode IRC for meeting the community.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Common Lisp, and beware: CL is addictive like a hard drug!

It would be nice if there was a docker image or a VM new developers could download, and which had a batteries-included Lisp/Scheme development environment with emacs/vim prettied up and having all the bells and whistles, so they could just start hacking away instead of spending days or weeks learning, setting up, and tweaking their editors and downloading and installing tons of libraries and plugins.

https://shinmera.github.io/portacle/ <-- it needs a bit more testing so the scary warning message at the top of the page will go away, but it's impressive already IMO.

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