[pro] Quicklisp's effect on your CL habits

[Tamas Papp]

On Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:39:32 -0400, Zach Beane wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've been trying to learn more about how Quicklisp has changed how
> Common Lisp hackers work. When I posed the question on the Quicklisp
> list, I got a response from Elliot Slaughter with a point that I hadn't
> considered before:
> 
>> I think part of what makes Quicklisp successful (in my opinion) is that
>> both new *and old* Lisp users love and make use of it. To me, it's
>> really magical to be able to cd into my project, start lisp, and
>> quickload it, and have it just work, even if I have customized versions
>> of some of the dependencies. I think the extent to which Quicklisp
>> "just works" but also stays out of the way makes older Lisp hackers
>> happy, which in turn makes the community more vibrant because library
>> and implementation authors are using the same system that new users are
>> being told to use (which wasn't always true with e.g. lisp-starter-pack
>> or asdf-install).
> 
> As I suspect the "pro" list likely has more old-timers than newcomers,
> I'd like to get your take on this idea.

I don't think I qualify as an old-timer, but here are my 2 cents:

1. As a user, Quicklisp made library management much easier.  I just
update regularly with each release, and get a reasonably recent
version of libraries that passed a few quality control checks.
Recently, I was setting CL up on a new machine, and it literally took
no more than a few minutes -- thanks to Quicklisp.  It is also great
for keeping my laptop and the server are use in a consistent state
when it comes to versions of libraries.

2. As an author of a few libraries, I am now paying attention to the
Quicklisp release cycle (it would be great if the dates could be made
more transparent though).  I used to put experimental code to the main
branch of my git repos (essentially using Github as a glorified backup
tool), but now I either branch or wait with pushing until I use it for
a while.  In particular, Quicklisp's automated checks about symbol
conflicts etc that are reported as issues on Github are very useful (I
hope that they are indeed automated and don't require a lot of effort
on your part).

Once again, thanks for Quicklisp!

Tamas