Comment by klibertp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klibertp | Hacker News Reader

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> Perhaps you had problems with the concepts of Lisp packages (namespaces)?

Rather unlikely. The namespaces are pretty easy to understand conceptually, and their interface is pretty minimal. Same goes for Quicklisp, very easy to start with, practically one function call needed in most cases.

Now there's ASDF. I know, it's a thing of beauty, but it's not simple to use or to understand.

Well, it's actually that way for good reasons: the problem it solves is complex and hard. The only comparable system I know of is Erlang releases mechanism, which is also a solid tool, but definitely not the simplest one in Erlang repertoire.

Anyway, if someone cites ASDF as a reason for struggling with Common Lisp, I find it very believable.

> > Perhaps you had problems with the concepts of Lisp packages (namespaces)?

> Rather unlikely. The namespaces are pretty easy to understand conceptually, and their interface is pretty minimal.

Packages can definitely give beginners trouble. I don't think it's that uncommon for newcomers to Lisp to have REPL sessions like this:

    CL-USER> (ql:quickload :iterate)
    (:ITERATE)
    CL-USER> (iter (for i below 10) (collect i))
    ;; Error: 3 undefined functions and two undefined variables

Then they find out they need to use the package first:

    CL-USER> (use-package :iterate)
    ;; Error: 3 NAME-CONFLICTs saying that the symbols ITER and friends
    ;; are already accessible

Then they throw their hands in the air about how frustrating Lisp tooling is. For a less obvious example, imagine they had just been using LOOP normally at some point in the past in that REPL session before trying to bring ITERATE in. Once you understand how symbols and packages work, it's easy to see why it works the way it does, but it's also easy to see how a beginner could get totally lost.

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