[chicago-lisp] (no subject)

[Corey Sweeney]

On 12/4/06, John Quigley <jquigley at jquigley.com> wrote:

> Chicago Lisp: 2006-12-02
> ------------------------------------------
> In attendance: John, Michael, Peter, Damien, John


Hey, don't forget me.  I was there for the last 3 muinites!  heh.


Topic: Group's Focus
> - general trend of feeling was that we should remain a Lisp group
> - no need to focus on Lisp entirely, we're open to talks and projects
>    that aren't necessarily Lisp specific
>    * that said, most of us are here because we have a particular fondness
>      for Lisp itself
>    * for this reason, we will remain on the Chicago Lisp mailing list
>      for the foreseeable future
> - try to attract commercial entities, we want to hear of the Lisp jobs!


> if everyone was mostly interested in lisp in particular or rather

> > a broader range of topics, for instance functional languages such as
> > Scheme or ML.  There was a bit of difference of opinion on this topic
> > and I think it might still be a bit of an open question.
>
> I think the general feeling is that we should remain as the Chicago
> Lisp.  I'm happy with that, though I do recognize the problems
> associated with a group becoming 'pigeon-holed;' if you meet long
> enough, there's only so many topics one can discuss about a certain
> technology.



Hmm, I'm confused.  Lets establish some terminology to help clarify:

Scheme is a dialect of lisp
Common lisp is a dialect of lisp
{emacs lisp is too}

So let's use "lisp" without any further constraints to refer to the "family"
of lisp languages.

Now scheme is a impure functional language (i.e. it has a "set" command),
just like Common lisp is a impure functional language.
I believe ML is a pure functional language. {i don't actually use it though,
so don't quote me on that}

----

Now given this, i'm not sure what was just said. heh

I would personally prefer having some room for non-lisp languages, but I
would still be ok with constraining ourselfs to lisp (i.e. no ML or haskel
(or erlang ;) ).  I would have a issue though if we were to constrain
ourselfs to the common lisp dialect.





> I personally like the sound of the Chicago Lisp and Programming Language
> Group.  What I just realized: if that were acronym-ized, it might become
> ChiLPL (which could be pronounced "chill pill" =)
>
> I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say on this.  Ideally, we get
> this resolved ASAP.  I'd like for us to be galvanized behind a
> definitive name in the very short term.


Chill pill sounds clever to me.  But I don't have any real strong feelings
on the name.




> Topic: Projects
> - possible collaborative work at Lisp Gardeners
> - work on setting up a website with a Lisp back-end




>    One suggestion
> > was that the group might want to start host a web-site, perhaps as an
> > excuse for a group project.  A wiki as well as cliki
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLiki> and AllegroServer
> > <http://allegroserve.sourceforge.net/> were discussed.


Question.  Does Allegroserve *require* you to buy allegro common lisp?  You
might alienate some potential helpers that way.

Also as I mentioned before {in person}, having just implemented a wiki in
scheme, I would probably be able to give some guidance if you decide to do a
wiki.


> Another idea was to adopt a project from Common Lisp Gardeners
>
> I thought this was a particularly well-conceived idea, and I'm already
> on their mailing list.  I invite other Chicago Lispniks to join me there.



This is probably too big of a project, but I'll toss out the idea anyway.
What about writing a common lisp "interpreter" in scheme?  Then using that
platform, people could write common lisp or scheme code.  All the standard
common lisp libraries could then be available to scheme programs, and would
be "continuation safe" (unlike most ffi's).  And all the scheme features,
and scheme libraries could easily be available to the "interpreted" common
lisp code. I.E try to unite the 2 lisp worlds. :)

Corey

-- 
((lambda (y) (y y)) (lambda (y) (y y)))
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