CIEL is a ready-to-use collection of Lisp libraries | Hacker News Reader

CIEL is a ready-to-use collection of Lisp libraries

ciel-lang.org

65 pointsgjvc12 comments

Hi everyone, CIEL is not done, it has rough edges, a build is provided only for Debian-ish systems, but I like the shape it is taking, and it is already useful.

Look, it is also a utility to easily write Lisp scripts with batteries included, and run them with a simple shebang (or without). I added this capacity a few weeks ago, in retrospect it's obvious.

The most important IMO is that I'm dogfooding it in various ways: launch one-off scripts that lay in my $PATH (simpleHTTPServer), as a CL meta-library I base open-source and closed-source projects on, and musing with its supercharged REPL (access to more utilities with the CIEL-USER package).

As a newcomer to CL, I was frustrated with many things, and the more I explored the ecosystem (I still find hidden gems years after), the more I wanted something easier to get started with. This is my exploration of the solution. I want CIEL to be straightforward to use for newcomers, a tool to use Common Lisp for trivial day-to-day tasks, and a ramp for new users to discovering the ecosystem and to creating their own CL libraries and projects (with or without CIEL).

Thank you, I definitely want to check it out when it's progressed more. Keep it up!

Having the JSON library return JS arrays as CL vectors by default is the only correct way; false and nil also have distinct values by default. Glad to see they didn't mess that up.

OTOH it aliases the UIOP/FILESYSTEM package to FILESYSTEM, and what functions are in UIOP/FILESYSTEM is an implementation detail that is free to change from version to version...

This does remove a lot of the friction that CL has. Great idea, hope people decide to adopt it - it may help bring younger developers to Lisp.

The creator, @vindarel is also active here on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=vindarel

Is this like a Babashka - https://github.com/babashka/babashka for Common Lisp?

In the faq they explicitly say yes

This seems great! I hope this gets noticed and further developed.

Well, the installation fails...

Hi, the installation issues will be worked on, CIEL was not ready for prime time :] But we can have a look together on GH issues. BTW my Gitlab CI pipeline passes. You probably need to get the latest "cl-str": git clone https://github.com/vindarel/cl-str ~/quicklisp/local-projects/

It might just be on my side.

I was confused about why the Center for International Environment Law was on HN first page https://www.ciel.org/

As opposed to the character from Melty Blood? Yes, names are usually overloaded and context matters.

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