freenode/#lisp - IRC Chatlog
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21:46:31
anamorphic
@Shinmera well basically, a clear way to refer to params, return values, and maybe linking between things.
21:47:46
Shinmera
anamorphic: Staple has a very simple standard markup it scans for in docstrings for xrefs. You can extend it to handle markup of your choice though
21:54:55
antoszka
Shinmera: every time I want to recommend it to a friend I can *never* remember the bloody name
21:55:27
Shinmera
antoszka: sorry that you can't remember a name that's literally one letter from portable and has cl in it
21:56:05
antoszka
Shinmera: yeah, it's just that this somehow doesn't *hook* into my mnemotechniques
21:57:02
antoszka
Shinmera: Cool, if nobody else is reporting the problem, I'm happy working on my techniques to remember that better
22:05:05
Shinmera
spinning up vms with the correct environment, compiling, and gathering results isn't trivial to automate.
22:05:13
antoszka
But yeah, I can't jump in and help for myself I'm mostly using spacemacs and I have time restrictions.
22:05:20
jcowan
While people are whining at you, the first screenshot at the portacle home page is basically illegible.
22:33:19
russellw
given a pathname, as either a string or a pathname object, is there a standard way to tell whether it is absolute or relative?
22:59:52
russellw
for getting environment vars, is this as good as it gets? http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/os.html#env
23:15:01
aeth
This is fun. Where in most languages I would resort to regular expressions to parse a line, I instead wrote a macro to iterate over a line separated by spaces, using #'position to provide start and end points on eitber side of the spaces.
23:23:13
jasom
jcowan: the first screenshot is exactly what portacle looks like on startup; most of the text on the screen is comments, which is dim-gray in the default theme that portacle used
2:40:38
Elronnd
is there a better way to turn an arbitrary thing into a string than (format nil "~A" thing)?
3:40:23
russellw
I want to save the values of some global variables, do some stuff that can mutate them, then restore the original values. This seems like a pattern that could be encapsulated in a with- kind of construct. I can try to write my own macro, but before I do that, is there anything that already exists that will do the job?
3:42:24
russellw
right, that – oh! wait, if you use it on global variables, it works like a stack, doesn't it? That actually sounds like what I need right now. Cool, thanks!
3:43:03
beach
There is no such thing as a "global variable" in Common Lisp. They are called "special variables" and can be bound by a LET.
3:57:37
loke
beach: it's not in the spec, of course, but most CL's have a distinction between special and global variables.
5:34:31
ThJ
no-defun-allowed: the idea that because lisp is so powerful, it encourages a fiercly independent roll-your-own approach and discourages collaboration, hampering any attempt at forming a large community around lisp.
5:35:48
|3b|
ACTION sees a problem where the community is small so it is harder to find people who want close enough to the same thing to collaborate :/
5:36:14
ThJ
from a business perspective, mediocre yet fungible programmers are desirable. unfortunately, some might say.
5:36:18
kristof
the truth is actually that less powerful programming languages are more prone to "roll-your-own" approaches because they fail to provide basic things taken for granted in other languages
5:36:18
|3b|
(specifically in #lispgames, we have a bunch of people working on things that are arguably the same at a high level, but disagree on details)
5:36:52
kristof
so "software architects" come up with arbitrary ways to string together their basic building blocks
5:36:59
|3b|
also smaller amount of people paid to actually finish things, encourages people to be less likely to reuse the unfinished things people did as a hobby
5:37:27
ThJ
i mean, a lot of lisp libraries do seem to suffer from the "80% of the way there" disease.
5:39:13
kristof
Ftr I have been dissatisfied with a great many open source libraries because this is a feature of quick projects in small communities, not programming languages.
5:39:38
ThJ
i have no trouble discussing overarching themes without needing to go into detail. good skill to have, i say.
5:39:43
oni-on-ion
"nothing quite unites a group of people quite like having a common enemy" social coherence
5:39:47
kristof
It does not actually take a long time to write whatever it is you think is missing unless the domain is very niche or could use very significant attention.
5:41:16
beach
ThJ: In the past, there have been people coming to #lisp, thinking that it is like other channels, where apparently people show up when they are bored and just want to waste time. They were surprised to find that #lisp is mainly about getting real work done.
5:41:28
ThJ
beach: i have something concrete to ask about, then: repeatedly on this channel, i've been told that various things are off limits. i'd like to have a concrete list of these things that i shouldn't be discussing.
5:42:05
kristof
Look, I think you'll find that a lot of people get annoyed by random pontification, that's all.
5:43:20
jasom
ThJ: anything directly related to developing in common lisp is fine. Tangents that are indirectly related may be fine.
5:44:12
beach
ThJ: I can give you a partial list of what is on topic, but it is not going to be exhaustive: Interpretation of the Common Lisp HyperSpec. Pointing out bugs in the Common Lisp HyperSpec. Applications written in Common Lisp. Libraries written in Common Lisp. Ideas for saving total work load for the Common Lisp community. Tools.
5:44:42
jackdaniel
although it is arguable that people always stay on topic here (and longer they are here less likely people will point it out), it is a fact, that it is more on-topic than some channels and it is a quality worth preserving :)
5:45:30
|3b|
ACTION takes the relative sizes of #lisp and #lispcafe as evidence that property is desired by #lisp
5:47:11
beach
ThJ: I can also give you a list of things that are definitely off topic, at least for lengthy discussions: What "Lisp" is. What languages other than Common Lisp are Lisp languages. Pointless discussions about terms that nobody cares to define.
5:49:38
jackdaniel
also this with "80% solution" claims seem like repeated from a "bipolar lisp programmer" verbatim without much thought put into it. appreciate your intelligence, do not act like a memo bot! ;-)
5:51:44
beach
ThJ: Then I have some discussions that I find extremely pointless myself, but that I am not willing to deem off-topic, in particular discussions about what the standard omitted and that someone thinks should have been included. Especially when such opinions come from people who have very little knowledge about programming language design, and compiler technology.
5:52:19
jackdaniel
well, it is a strawman argument, most open source ecosystems suffer from scratch-my-itch problems (in average)
5:53:23
ThJ
jackdaniel: i have plenty of counterarguments, but if i entered into this, we'd both be here for a few hours, spamming the channel.
5:54:32
jackdaniel
I've just pointed out, that repeating someone else opinions with only surface knowledge may be perceived silly from the 3rd person perspective (and I'm /off now :)
6:10:29
russellw
Is there any way to make the standard output stream behave like tee, so everything printed to standard output also gets logged to a file?
6:41:13
russellw
And my next question is sort of a follow on from the last one, but it needed a full test case, so I wrote it up on https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52868304/exit-without-losing-cached-output
6:44:28
|3b|
"If a new output file is being written, and control leaves abnormally, the file is aborted and the file system is left, so far as possible, as if the file had never been opened. "
7:01:40
ealfonso
I'm trying to md5 an image from the web, but using ironclad: (ironclad:digest-stream :md5 (drakma:http-request "https://github.com/favicon.ico" :want-stream t)) I get "Unsupported stream element-type FLEXI-STREAMS::CHAR* for stream #<FLEXI-STREAMS:FLEXI-IO-STREAM {1004B2CE73}>." Is there an easy way to change the stream element type to the correct one?
7:04:37
|3b|
ealfonso: from https://edicl.github.io/drakma/#arg-want-stream, "If you want to read binary data from this stream, read from the underlying stream which you can get with FLEXI-STREAM-STREAM. "
8:41:38
beach
Luckily, we are using Common Lisp, so implementing an idea is fairly easy, compared to some other languages.
8:42:19
Shinmera
no-defun-allowed: You implement it and then half a year later you realize it was crap and do it over again until that stops happening
8:43:36
beach
My colleagues in the generation before me had no experience in actually writing code, but they had read in the software engineering literature that you have to design before implementing. That rule was created when designing was relatively easy and implementing was hard (punch cards, batch processing, delays...).
8:44:19
Shinmera
Well, designing ahead of time is still a good idea, just to braistorm ideas and architectures
8:45:05
beach
Lycurgus: These colleagues were all theoreticians, and this is France, so there was comparatively little practical work done in academia at the time.
8:46:49
Lycurgus
well coding generations are less than 10 years anyway. I like to think about it till I match it up with enough done stuff to make my work doable.
8:46:57
beach
I still write specifications first sometimes, especially when I know that implementing and testing it is going to be hard, like for the SICL garbage collector.
8:48:37
Shinmera
I need to start documenting some bits of Trial because even I'm starting to lose track of how everything was supposed to fit together
8:51:19
Shinmera
I also have an idea for an ELS paper based on some more Trial work that builds on what I presented this year.
9:20:07
Demosthenex
i've been having a hardware issue causing crashes (laptop sleep), is there a way to make slime save the comint history frequently?