This is what all technical tutorials should look like. Well-composed and generally free of grammatical errors, spends just the right amount of time explaining each new topic as it is introduced, comes with full code samples, and includes visual samples of what the code does. Also, lengthy enough to treat the material in depth, while still being sufficiently self-contained that I can follow along -- without having read part 1 and without more than a few months of Common Lisp under my belt from a couple years back (tho I've done a decent amount of Clojure and Emacs Lisp.)
This is a very good read. I’m developing a multiplayer, third-person, spell-based shooter game using Lisp (ClojureScript). It’s a 3D web-based game. I’ll also be writing a blog post about my journey, including the tools and abstractions I created for the project. If you’re interested, here’s a demo link: https://wizardmasters.io
Unless I'm mistaken, I think fire_lake might be referring to a wholly unrelated first-person RPG spellcasting game project wherein the player would draw glyphs with their mouse in order to cast spells, and then there would be a surprise later in the game based on this mechanic (which was later repurposed for The Witness).
Tiled is great. I really wish there was an SVG equivalent though. Inkscape is alright but custom data parameters are really annoying to deal with, and ultimately the tool is built around drawing things to paper.
Wow! Your package.sh and in general managing builds for three operating systems is a master class in itself - reading through the GitHub repo was a good learning experience.
I usually build command line Common Lisp apps in SBCL or LispWorks, but I might do the next one in ECL because having builds for both macOS and Linux would be cool, and it would be fun to try something new.
There's also Langband: a fairly complete Angband clone written in CL by my late friend. Including SDL/tiled version; however the code is pre-Quicklisp and it'd probably would be some work to get it to run again.
This is super solid, but the setup in Part 1 (CL itself, Python, C, lots of steps) I think is indicative of why CL is not super popular, especially with young programmers. Which is a shame. Would be awesome if someone felt like putting in the work to make the language more approachable (installation wise).
This doesn't exactly get at it, but https://ciel-lang.org/ is at least attacking part of too-many-steps problem while focusing more on the too-many-choices and long in the tooth defaults (as I understand it).
I don't understand why turning a simple loop into a 'mindbend' is considered good. The downfall of programming is complexity, if you're getting your mind blown by a loop how are you going to do the rest of the program?
mindbending can also refer to something being deceptively simple. you might think it would be a big complicated mess, but using this one weird trick makes it really obvious what's going on.
How does that relate to a simple loop construct though? Why would you want that to be mind bending in interface or implementation? Every other language makes it as simple as possible.
This isn't really true – you have languages like Odin that only have a for loop, no while loop, that only supports index-based iteration. Then you have languages like Python that let you loop over an arbitrary iterable, and define your own iterables. Some languages allow conditionals in loops, some don't. Some let you loop over multiple iterables, while some only take one at a time.
Common Lisp happens to be on the upper end of what loop allows – you can use it as a standard for loop pretty easily, but the interface gives you many other options.
And then there's Scheme, where there are no iterative loops; all looping is done with recursion. You can build pretty much everything other languages do with loops on top of that, though.
> Common Lisp happens to be on the upper end of what loop allows – you can use it as a standard for loop pretty easily, but the interface gives you many other options.
If you really wanna get freaky try 'do. It is the heroin addicted cousin of 'loop
yes the syntax for 'do is simple, like that of lisp. however 'do allows you to make far more complex iteration constructs than 'loop. 'loop is just a DSL to make some of these constructs more concise. read up on it
The mindbend was more of my approach to the construct. It began with disdain before even really using it much. Looking back, I really couldn't articulate what I disliked about it.
Why loop when you can https://iterate.common-lisp.dev/ instead? No s-expr-less alien syntax, no need for `do` to switch to back to Lisp syntax, normal `if`/`when` without the ugly `else`/`end` and generally useful features added.
If I used Common Lisp more I'd probably have a go at copying Racket's `for` forms[1]; they're really nice because you can usally tell at a glance what they're going to return - `for/list` returns a list for example. No having to scan the body for a `collect`.
But in the meantime since discovering iterate I've barely used `loop`. It just feels so much more lispy and I find myself running to the documentation less often.
Interesting concept, but it visually has the same problem as loop IMO, using keywords to implement a new syntax instead of seamlessly blending with Lisp (at the cost of needing code walking, though).
And it seems to lack all the iterations drivers (incl. builtin destructuring) that make half of loop/iterate's usefulness and "reads like English" comfy factor; especially liking
(for (i j) on list [by #'cddr])
(for i initially init-expr then then-expr)
(for prev previous i [initially init-expr])
(for i in-{file,stream} [using #'reader])
Racket splits up the iteration forms from what to iterate over (sequences[1]). You can compose different sequence constructors together, or make brand new ones, without introducing new syntax.
It has limited destructuring - sequences can return multiple values, all of which can be bound. There's an adapter to convert one that does that into returning a single list, but not the other way around. If there was it could be used with `in-slice` to be equivalent to your first example.
I could probably write a new sequence to get the `previous` behavior; don't think `initially ... then` is possible.
Lots of sequences for reading from open ports (the Racket/Scheme name for CL streams)... `(for ([i (in-port)]) ...)` for example (with an optional reader argument defaulting to `read`).