Shen-js Browser REPL | Hacker News Reader

Shen-js Browser REPL

gravicappa.github.io

Looking for a feel for Shen?

A Strange Loop talk by @deech (40minutes): Shen: A Sufficiently Advanced Lisp. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMcRBdSdO_U

An essay: http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html

It's insightful and readable and it links to several articles new Shen users would be interested in[0]. It was written before Shen, so it talks about Shen's predecessor, Qi. This article and the Bipolar Lisp Programmer by Mark Tarver (creator of Shen) made me feel not so weird for not "getting" UNIX, and helped me get excited about lisp.

I'm looking to use Shen or another highly cross-platform functional language for my next project. Application logic in Shen with type-checking. web code using some framework.

[0] Wow I'm re-skimming it now: it has Stanislav, James Gosling, buncha Smalltalk, Rob Pike's "Systems Research is Dead" and a lot more. This is actually a good overview of ways to be disillusioned with programming. IMO disillusionment by knowing our historical failures is an antidote to the hype-machine.

I loved the essay and how it explains the problems with collaboration in Lisp

One thing I'd like to add though: The reason collaboration fails isn't just NIH being easy. The language is so malleable that its hard (sometimes even impossible) to understand other people's code. You have to get into the their mind and adapt to their way of thinking to make any meaningful contributions. For every new developer, you potentially get to learn a completely new and different language that need not have any principles behind it (at least Haskell EDSLs are all guided by the same principles of a few type classes and concepts from category theory).

So, inventing your own stuff is easy, and at the same time understanding other people's stuff is hard.

Some information for people who don't know; this is about the Shenlanguage.org; a Lisp with a novel (to me anyway) implementation (it is written on top of a kind of minimal Lisp called KLambda and thus very easy to port) with some great features and many target platforms, all under BSD license.

Nice work with the REPL Ramil, however, the site could use some testing on at least Safari, as it looks like this; http://i.glui.me/1deY5lR (Safari 8, latest update).

This is good work towards getting people working with Shen faster. There is a long way to go but it's worth it!

Has anyone written KLambda in erlang? Would be an interesting alternative to Lisp flavored erlang.

I think some people mentioned plans to do that; don't think anything materialised yet.

The greenthread impl is not getting enough hype here! Great work!

This is fun. I like that you can load shen source code from random places on the web. That would make a good personal scratchpad.

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