Category Archives: Programming

SBCL 1.1.13

Posted on 2013-11-07 by jcs

I forgot to mention that SBCL 1.1.13 is out and ready for download. There are some bug fixes, a few minor enhancements, and a couple of optimizations for SXHASH. You can check the release notes to see exactly what’s changed. … Continue reading →

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Common Lisp Features

Posted on 2013-10-31 by jcs

A couple of years ago, Lisp luminary Nikodemus Siivola rescued and reposted Abhishek Reddy’s Features of Common Lisp page. It serves as a nice introduction to what makes Common Lisp such a great development environment. It doesn’t, of course, cover … Continue reading →

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Running Ping in Emacs

Posted on 2013-10-29 by jcs

Last year I wrote about my delight in discoverying the Emacs Net Utilities. It’s nice to be able to run a quick ping, traceroute, or even some of the other network utilities right from Emacs. I’ve found, however, that there … Continue reading →

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List of Free Programming Books

Posted on 2013-10-22 by jcs

Victor Felder has an excellent list of free programming books over at Github. The list is indexed in several ways so it’s pretty easy to find books in the area you’re interested in. Among other things, I learned that there … Continue reading →

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Specifying Indent Rules for Emacs Lisp

Posted on 2013-10-21 by jcs

Eric J.M. Ritz has an excellent post on indenting Elisp code. Say what? Isn’t that what Emacs is for? Yes but there’s a corner case when you’re writing macros. Here’s a macro that I use to make my Elisp code … Continue reading →

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A Nice Example of Interactive Programming

Posted on 2013-10-09 by jcs

I’ve written previously about interactive or exploratory coding. It’s the sort of thing that Emacs and Emacs Lisp make easy and attractive. You sort of feel your way along writing little snippets of code and then stitch them together into … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.12 Is Released

Posted on 2013-10-02 by jcs

Version 1.1.12 of Steel Bank Common Lisp is out. As usual, compilation and installation on my OS X machines encountered no problems. The new release features two enhancements (SOCKET-SHUTDOWN added, documentation for extensible sequences), two optimizations (EQUAL and EQUALP transforms … Continue reading →

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The Nikodemus Common Lisp FAQ

Posted on 2013-09-05 by jcs

I’m sure I’ve mentioned Nikodemus’ Common Lisp FAQ before but it’s been a while so it’s worth reminding everyone. The FAQ is meant for Lisp n00bs as a way of getting over some of the initial hurdles a beginner faces. … Continue reading →

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Interactive SICP

Posted on 2013-09-04 by jcs

Longtime Irreal readers know that I consider Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) arguably the best computer science book ever written. Therefore, I was delighted when I discovered an online version of SICP with an embedded Scheme interpreter so … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.11 Is Out

Posted on 2013-09-02 by jcs

The latest version of my favorite Common Lisp environment, SBCL, is out and available at the usual place. If you’re running Linux there’s a binary available, otherwise just grab the source and compile it yourself. Compiling is very easy—just follow … Continue reading →

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