Tag Archives: Common-lisp

SBCL 1.1.17

Posted on 2014-04-02 by jcs

SBCL 1.1.17 is out. As usual, it built and passed the tests without problems. This months release has a bunch of bug fixes and a couple of enhancements/optimizations. See the NEWS page for details. And no, despite Rainer Joswig’s April … Continue reading →

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Common Lisp Reader Macros

Posted on 2014-03-10 by jcs

Chaitanya Gupta has posted a nice introduction to reader macros. The conventional wisdom is that reader macros are ripe for abuse and many experts recommend avoiding them. Still, there are times when they solve a legitimate problem1 and in those … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.16 Released

Posted on 2014-03-03 by jcs

The latest monthly release of Steel Bank Common Lisp is out. As usual, I had no problems building and installing the new release. You can download binaries or source at the usual place. After last month’s major enhancement of the … Continue reading →

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Lisp Debugging with Slime

Posted on 2014-02-12 by jcs

Rainer Joswig has a nice video up demonstrating how to debug Lisp with Slime. In a sense there’s nothing new here: most Slime users are pretty much aware of the facilities that he uses. Nevertheless, it’s very useful to see … Continue reading →

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A Lisp Overview

Posted on 2014-02-06 by jcs

A few days ago I wrote about Simon Tatham’s overview of C. Today, I want to mention a very nice overview of Lisp. The overview is really a Lisp primer aimed at C/C++/Java programmers (it’s notes from the CSC330 course … Continue reading →

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Less Familiar Lisp Functions

Posted on 2014-02-05 by jcs

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Christopher Neufeld’s series on the less familiar parts of Common Lisp. He’s up to the Fs now so if you’re interested in Lisp, you should check in with his latest posts. One … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.15 Released

Posted on 2014-02-02 by jcs

Steel-Bank Common Lisp 1.1.15 just got released. As usual, it built and installed without incident on both my Macs. This release brings a new register allocation algorithm, some optimizations that increase the speed of make-array under certain circumstances, some enhancements, … Continue reading →

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An Empty Do

Posted on 2014-01-23 by jcs

Back when I was first learning Lisp by reading Paul Graham’s Ansi Common Lisp, Graham mentioned that sometimes you can do useful work with a DO loop having an empty body. I thought that was pretty neat but I’ve never … Continue reading →

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Know Lisp, Get a Job?

Posted on 2014-01-12 by jcs

Over at the Lisp subreddit, nhs111throwaway asks if anyone actually got a job because they know Lisp. The problem with a question like that is that you’re going to get only anecdotal information as answers. Still, it’s interesting to read … Continue reading →

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Optimizing Lisp

Posted on 2014-01-09 by jcs

Over at the Lisp Subreddit, they have a pointer to an interesting 2006 paper on How to make Lisp go faster than C by Didier Verna. One of the persistent myths about Lisp is that it’s slow. That comes from … Continue reading →

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