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Comment by FredPret | Hacker News Reader

I’ve tried multiple times to get into SBCL, but every time I run into the problem that I have to learn Emacs first.

I know there are lots of other ways to work with SBCL, but they are either second-class citizens or paid.

You don't strictly need to learn Emacs, but you should probably just join the cult. I bit the bullet and did it about 20 years ago now, and it's been a good thing. Heck, I've got a non-programming dayjob now, but I've still got a keyboard that puts the control key under my thumb: https://x-bows.com.

Why would you have to learn emacs? You can largely batch compile and run lisp code same as any other language, if that is what you want to do. In many ways, the workflow can be very similar to python, if you don't want to get too advanced in the repl. And, to stress, you don't have to get too advanced to get going.

Simply using rlwrap with sbcl is workable.

rlwrap is a great tool to have in your toolbelt anyways

You can use emacs just for the REPL/debugger, and another editor for editing files. I did this for a couple of years, after previously using CLISP for its REPL. You can use the menus for things; the only keyboard shortcut you MUST know is CTRL-G (which if you hit enough times will cancel whatever operation you accidentally started).

Alternatively try geany-lisp[1], it was created specifically for those with emacs phobia. There are probably some sharp corners using it, so feel free to file issues if you run into any. It should work with Geany 1.26-1.38; when posting this, I just noticed that there is now a Geany 2.0; I'm assuming the major version bump broke plugins so it may not work anymore.

1: https://github.com/jasom/geany-lisp

I agree that it's a hurdle.

Portacle, https://portacle.github.io/ , is a way around config and whatnot, lowering the threshold a little.

Learning Emacs is not a bad thing you know..

It has a lot of other goodies like : Org, Magit etc which makes it worth while.

I normally dabble with CLISP (notably because of its built in readline), and if I could SOMEHOW get it to build with SSL, I'd play with it more.

This is what I stick at the top of my Lisp files when dabbling.

  (defun l ()
    (load "file.lisp"))

  (defun e ()
    (ext:shell "vi file.lisp"))

And then I just muddle my way through with a (e) and (l) cycle. Since I tend to not work on 10,000 line files -- this works fine (my files are < 5K lines). More than fast enough, and I get to retain any work variables within the image (plus my command history). It's quite effective really. (print...) debugging works because you can run your code at whatever granularity you like (and you can always refactor it to a finer grain if you want). Don't doubt it until you try it. Turn around is very fast.

That said, I discovered that for some reason, firing off something as simple as "vi file.lisp" from SBCL is stupifyingly complicated. I made several 10s google searches and 5s GPT attempts to make that work, but gave up.

So, can't say I can recommend that style of development in SBCL unless someone is willing to chime in with the, apparently, paragraph of code necessary to launch vi on a file.

It's not that bad:

  (require 'uiop)
  (defun c ()
    (uiop:run-program '("emacs" "-nw" "file.lisp")
                      :output :interactive
                      :input :interactive))

EDIT: note that SBCL comes with UIOP included by default, but if you want to use SBCL's implementation-specific facility, it's only slightly different:

  (defun c ()
    (sb-ext:run-program "/usr/bin/emacs"
                        '("-nw" "file.lisp")
                        :input t
                        :output t))

If you don't want a full emacs, jmacs from 'joe' an do the trick.

There is Lem too.

https://lem-project.github.io/

I really want to like lem, so I followed all the steps at both https://lem-project.github.io/installation/sdl2/macos/ and https://lem-project.github.io/installation/ncurses/macos/.

Neither ends in a working development environment or even text editor.

Compare this to learning Python or Javascript or the C family. VSCode or even just your standard OS text editor is all you need. You can decide to start learning, find a tutorial on Youtube, and execute your hello world in 60-120 seconds.

Paul Graham used VI and clisp when he built viaweb.

It's because of his continual praise of lisp that I wanted to check it out.

What I'm complaining about is that it's much harder to "check it out" than it perhaps could be.

At one point many years ago, I wanted to check out this new Python thing. It was so easy, I've been hooked ever since.

> It's because of his continual praise of lisp that I wanted to check it out.

I can't argue with that. It did take me a long time to get comfortable with Lisp. But I felt it was worth the efforts.

> At one point many years ago, I wanted to check out this new Python thing. It was so easy, I've been hooked ever since.

IDLE is a underrated feature of Python. The default install includes a barebones IDE together with the REPL, making setup for beginners nearly zero effort. On the other hand, in lisp land, step 0 to learn most lisps is to learn emacs beforehand.

I use slimv with vim, but basic Emacs is not difficult: Ctrl-x b to swich betwen buffers, Ctrl-x s to save, Ctrl-x c to exit, Ctrl-c Ctrl-c to evaluate the CL buffer under Slime, Ctrl-x e to eval most Elisp and CL code functions.

Also, knowning CL makes learning Elisp a breeze, so you can customize your editor like nothing else.

I'm in the same boat. I just don't care about EMACS, don't like it, and there's little incentive when I'm just playing around. It's a shame because Lisp is really fun and interesting. I just don't want to spend so much time dicking around with an editor just so I can write some code.

Try neovim + vlime!

The plugin in Pulsar (Atom) is pretty good: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... (Sublime, Vim, Jupyter notebooks, VSCode (OKish), Eclipse (simple)…)

Vim plus sbcl has been ok. Follow this I am happy since

https://susam.net/lisp-in-vim.html

Not 2nd class and I can use it mostly on mac; linux and windows (linux side)are ok. All good.

> I’ve tried multiple times to get into SBCL, but every time I run into the problem that I have to learn Emacs first.

I have the same problem with Hylang.

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