[pro] Curating libraries

[Faré]

Dear Lisp pro,

I think it is time for us (the Lisp professionals) to do a better job
at curating libraries.

Now that, thanks to Quicklisp, people aren't afraid from using
libraries anymore,
we find that there are too many libraries for any given problem domain,
yet that most of these libraries do a bad 80% job max (sometimes 50% or less).
Moreover, navigating which of these libraries makes most sense to use is hard.

Ideally, we'd have a one distinguished library providing a 100% solution
for any such domain, that we could use and recommend, and that would have
an easily recognized name.

For instance, regarding pattern-matching libraries, I'd like to retire
fare-matcher,
and after migrating any remaining useful functionality (such as
fare-quasiquote),
recommend that all users should use optima instead. I would similarly push
toward the retirement of all other pattern-matching libraries but one.
That one library could then be called "pattern-matching" and use the package
"pattern-matching".

Similarly, I'm trying to push for a single data structure library.
This time, I'm putting forward my own Lisp-Interface-Library (aka LIL)
because I think it has much more potential than other libraries,
including some with a lot of existing data structures (such as cl-containers):
Indeed, LIL can accommodate both pure and stateful data structures,
in both Interface-Passing Style (IPS) and
traditional Object-Oriented Programming (OOP),
with automatic mapping between the four combinations.
Moreover, its IPS allows for parametric polymorphism,
which wasn't previously available in CL, and
is great to bootstrap new data structures.

I'd like to invite you to join me in this effort.
Whichever libraries you use or maintain,
please partake in this consolidation effort.

—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org
The problem with being a citizen of the world is
that you don't get to travelling abroad much.