Seed: Interactive software environment based on Common Lisp | Hacker News Reader

Seed: Interactive software environment based on Common Lisp

github.com

121 pointstodsacerdoti21 comments

This project, which seems interesting, would greatly benefit from a better explanation of what it is, and some screenshots.

Isn't the opening paragraph perfectly fine as it is? It was the first thing I read and I feel like I understand exactly what it is:

> Seed is an interactive software environment. With it you can create and use computer programs in many ways. It is based on the Common Lisp language and runs inside the Web browser, allowing you to build software on a local or remote computer system, and it can present programs and their output using a wide variety of display modes.

An environment for creating programs, that you can use locally or remotely, and it can show programs and data in various ways.

Sort of. It'd be really great to get a feel for what it'd be like to use without having to mess around with npm and sbcl. Plus the most recent commits to it are 6 years old... while this isn't uncommon in the Lisp world (that community has a pretty solid "we don't need to change this anymore because the library is complete" philosophy), when bringing npm into it I definitely have concerns that this would be a waste of time to try to get running because of how many times the wheel has been reinvented in that world.

A couple of screenshots would definitely help me assess whether or not it's worth the time to try to get this running (and figuring out the probability that it would be that it's something I'd love using).

Comments in this short thread provide multiple videos and show 150 recent commits to the project!

Active as of yesterday https://github.com/phantomics/seed/branches

Amazing! They weren’t on main, didn’t look deeper into the repo.

True. Even the tutorial is just a wall of text

CLOG [1] seems to do something similar (though it's hard to tell; Seed's README isn't terribly informative), except CLOG has more tutorials, is better documented, has a more fleshed out README, and has ongoing support.

[1] https://github.com/rabbibotton/clog

CLOG is something I've wanted to try for a long time but then I need to spend some time learning CL.

CLOG has its own CL course.

Project is not active, but if someone likes it, consider removing node in favour of CLOG. So much easier & faster.

It is very active, but commits aren't in main: https://github.com/phantomics/seed/tree/revival

Ow! Even the better!

Hi everyone, developer here. Seed is not abandoned but its original codebase has been; it is now in the process of being rebuilt. You can check on its progress in the revival branch of the repo.

Here is a quick video demo of the old Seed: https://vimeo.com/237947324?fl=pl&fe=sh

You can see my LispNYC presentation of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnec6_7PWkc

In my initial attempt at Seed I didn't yet understand Common Lisp well enough. That's part of the reason I wrote the April APL compiler between now and then, to gain enough understanding of the fundamentals to pursue such a comprehensive project.

The original Seed was based on React.js for the frontend and attempted to bypass textual Lisp programming as much as possible. This was an ambitions goal and React wasn't the right fit for such a project; it's a heavy system that's undergone rapid development over the years and Seed needs something that's lighter and can function more as a simple outgrowth of the underlying Lisp code. The current Seed codebase uses HTMX and Alpine.js as its main frontend tools, and the model also isn't tightly coupled to browser interfaces; it could later be possible to build terminal UIs and desktop interfaces with the same set of UI classes.

Regarding CLOG, Seed and CLOG are both interface-oriented projects but beyond that they're quite different. The idea of CLOG is a toolkit to specify interfaces with CL; it offers you many elements you can build into interface. The idea of Seed is to extend the manifestation of symbolic expressions beyond text, to have list structures that manifest interface elements that a person can interact with to create and modify programs.

For instance, you can have a series of CL function calls that perform transformations on an image, like lightening or blurring it. Using Seed's model, this list of function calls can be represented in a user interface similar to the layer lists seen in graphics software like GIMP and Photoshop. With the right combination of interface elements it could eventually be possible to duplicate the functionality of these image editing tools in a general-purpose programming platform. It would be like building GIMP into Emacs with the ability to instantly open, edit, and save a changed version of any drawing tool and have it show up in the toolbar.

This model guides the development of both the user interface and the underlying Lisp code, so it's about more than building an interface toolkit. It's about the UI as the outgrowth of the underlying software structure.

Feel free to drop more questions here.

Wait, you created April, one of the most amazing hosted languages on Lisp just to learn Lisp? Wow! And here I am toiling over a simple CRUD library management app trying to figure out CLOS and it's not even going well.

April is a revelation and I'm putting it in my framework. APL reminds me of Leibniz's alphabet of concepts for his calculus ratiocinator. So gorgeous and efficient. I'm getting the keyboard.

Thanks, the utility of April was a big motivator as well, I used it in my Bloxl project (https://vimeo.com/935602359). Still, one of the reasons I focused on it as much as I did was because I knew that if I couldn't execute such a project well, I would have no chance to realize Seed. Implementing APL is a big undertaking but nonetheless one that has a clearly defined and testable goal. Seed is something with no reference to base a design off of, an objective toward which many paths appear to lead but only a few have the potential to fulfill in the best way. The challenge of such a project is on a completely different level from an APL compiler.

Get it to work on here and we’re golden https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

Sooooo. if it runs in the browser why isn't it embedded in the README?

I suspect it requires a backend…

…and it tells me to install node.js and gulp? :-O

Gulp is no longer required for the new Seed but Node still is. Unfortunately some JS libraries like Codemirror are only set up to build with Node. Node is used only to build these libraries and plays no part in the runtime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com