Ask HN: Is there any rails for Lisp? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is there any rails for Lisp?

8 pointsgalfarragem10 comments

I'm searching an easy lisp web framework. My programming experience is not much (besides HTML and CSS), I use sometimes AUTOLISP for Autocad (It was my first real language besides some BASIC) and for me is much more simple to understand and read than other languages. No joke. With lisp I feel that I always I'm in control and know where each piece of code belongs, instead of other languages where everything floats around with more or less arbitrary indentation. I'm an architect (or used to be one) but due to construction crisis I'm trying to change job, using my design skills to web development. Is there any RAILS for LISP? It's a pity that Lisp community is so antisocial. "They" should make a good website and create a real brand that could help newbies and boost popularity.

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Are you looking for something like Web Noir? http://webnoir.org/

Seconded. I used it for a simple website and I liked it.

I've looked in the past, and the two I've found are weblocks (common-lisp.net/project/cl-weblocks) and dragonfly (www.rundragonfly.com). From what I can tell, there is very little adoption of either. I would recommend Python or Ruby, even if you arent familiar with either. The available frameworks are much more mature, and help is easy to find given the large number of users.

also, here's a previous (2007) HN discussion on the subject: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44882

We're already in 2012. Nothing changed in Lisp scene since 2007?

http://weitz.de/

hunchentoot

Prepare to be blown away by Edi Weitz's libraries. Excellent code reading.

I believe that he made a great work there, but it is still very low level material for a newbie, or at least he cannot sell it easy to a newbie (even more to me cause I don't have a CS background). I was just watching Noir in Clojure. This seems more rails oriented or at least the website is more appealing for a newbie. It looks that there is a little bit of that magic that rails seems to bring: "Make sure you have leiningen installed, that way we can use the lein-noir plugin to create a new noir project. Four commands later, your site is up and running." This sounds great for a newbie. You don't need to be one day to discover how to install.

By Weitz website I just get to this. It seems interesting: http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/

Yes, quicklisp is cool. I've used it and it makes package management much easier for my tasks.

I think you are right that Clojure (and noir) is probably much newbie-friendly that Common Lisp (and hunchentoot). One aspect of the Clojure movement that I have been impressed by is that the community is open and friendly and easy to find.

I am putting more of my own time and effort into Clojure because:

1 - it runs on the JVM, so it is easier for me to sneak into my workplace than asking sys admins to install SBCL on production machines. 2 - DSLs that make me more productive (Noir, Cascalog) 3 - Books. There are several new and well-written books available on Clojure.

Clojurescript & express on node.js

Interesting solution. It compiles to javascript.

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