Hello,
I am another Lisp newbie. While I have been kind of looking at Common
Lisp off and on for a few years, I have only tried to seriously get
into it during the last year or so.
I wrote my first line of code in QBASIC when I was about eight years
old. From there I moved on to C/C++. Then I had a brief encounter with
a couple of scripting languages as part of the BBS "scene" - languages
whose names I no longer remember... Then I moved on to Java and was
instantly in love with automatic memory management and the concept of
a virtual machine that provides "safe" execution.
After a while I decided I wanted to learn a new non-scripting
language, so I started Googling. It came down to either Eiffel or
Smalltalk. In the end I ended up going the Smalltalk route because of
an instant affection for the "pureness" of it (in terms of OO).
As a result of reading comp.lang.smalltalk I also got into
Ruby. Initially I was very excuited about it, being so close to
Smalltalk in terms of being pure OO and making extensive use of
closures. After a while my enthusiasm dropped a bit because I realized
Ruby was a bit too perlish for my taste; however, Ruby is still my
favorite scripting language.
As it happens, comp.lang.smalltalk would come to dictate another
choice of language - Common Lisp. I originally began looking into it
because several people expressed favorable opinions of CLOS. Since
then I have not found a language more interesting to me than Common
Lisp.
Of the languages I have used, I probably have the most experience with
Java. C++ is probably second, being the language I am currently using
as part of my regular day job.
I heard about cl-gardeners and I think it is a great idea. Personally
I am primarily interested in creating a unified generic library
portable across CL implementations. This is something I truly miss
from the Java world. I would like to help create a CL library that:
* Includes a wide range of API:s that cover many of the usual things
you might expect from a modern language. At the top of my personal
list is networking, concurrency, and a reasonable level of OS/POSIX
integration.
* Is well-documented, including error handling.
* Is coherent. Is maintained, released and supported as a singular
entity.
* Provides high-level abstractions rather than thin wrappers around
an underlying API.
* Is release-engineered with a definite effort made to make sure all
supported CL implementations continue to work (long-term goal).
In short, I would like a library which, in conjunction with a
supported CL implementation, is enough to start writing real
applications.
Reading past posts on this list I get the impression there are at
least a couple of people with similar goals. I would like to try to
actually get started working on something like this. Does anybody want
to get together on it? Should things like this be worked out right
here on the ML, or should we try to keep the details off list and then
ask for feedback once there is something to show?
--
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB
PGP userID: 0xE9758B7D or 'Peter Schuller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>'
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