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Comment by Athas | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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