Launch the lisp track? about common-lisp HOT 34 CLOSED

I feel bad about leaving this Lisp version of exercism lie fallow, and also for moving away from exercism itself (oh and the changes you seem to have made!).

I guess I may be a local maxima for Lisp knowledge (scary thought!) - so if there is interest in moving forward with this then I'll step forward and do my best to nitpick.

My big question is: is there interest from someone other than me for a Common Lisp exercism track?

from common-lisp.

I haven't had anyone email me about it, and I don't really move in lisp-y circles, so I don't actually know. I have no problem letting this wait until there are more people interested.

from common-lisp.

I think we should let it wait. Perhaps set a deadline and if no interest we can delete it.

from common-lisp.

Cool, let's wait. I don't feel like a deadline is necessary, I'll just revisit periodically. Thanks!

from common-lisp.

I'm interested in this. Can I do anything to help?

from common-lisp.

That would be great!

We need a couple things:

• A "getting started" page that explains how to get lisp installed and how to run the tests, and (perhaps) something about linting and other resources for learning about lisp. This would go in the docs https://github.com/exercism/docs/tree/master/app/pages/languages
• A couple of people who would be willing to check in regularly for the first few weeks to provide feedback to people.

Lastly, before we launch, we'd need to beta-test a couple of exercises:

exercism fetch lisp point-mutations

from common-lisp.

The instructions here:

https://github.com/exercism/docs/blob/master/app/pages/languages/getting-started-with-lisp.md

mostly seem good enough to me. I have two reservations.

1. I think the "Running tests" section may need some expansion and clarification. I'll try some out and see what I can come with. I'll go through all the instructions and see if anything else that seems like it could use clarification.
2. If we get asked for non-Quicklisp options for lisp-unit and any other packages, I feel like we should come up with something. It's not at all hard, but the options are legion, and we might want to do a little better than 1) Save the files for the package you want somewhere. 2) Load them.

Number 2 is such a minor reservation that I hate to write any more words on it, but I find I'm biting off a deluge of opinionation on the topic because: I don't use Quicklisp, and I feel funny at the prospect of many Lisp newbies (I'm one myself, really) coming up thinking that Quicklisp, useful and good as it is, and with all due respect to Zach, were as vital a tool as Bundler (much less Leiningen or Mix). I don't think it is. But if the past is any indication, a) there will not be many Lisp newbies b) such as there are, they will come to their own conclusions, regardless. Okay. That's it. Sorry for the bloviage. Quicklisp is great. Let's use it!

from common-lisp.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I started doing this exercism track on 25 Dec 2013 in order to 1) avoid family 2) play with some Lisp. QuickLisp was a very expedient way for me to get going. I'm open to any other suggestions.

I think including lisp-unit (or equivalent) in this project itself might be a reasonable way of replacing QuickLisp.

from common-lisp.

I followed the steps on the getting started page and began the hamming exercise just fine. I put some notes in a gist here:

https://gist.github.com/wobh/31010d093212aa4d46ea

It only affirms that I can follow directions. I noticed that the other getting started pages are pretty bare bones, so we may even have overdone it a bit. (I added a bunch of links).

from common-lisp.

http://exercism.io/submissions/d364414cc75e481bbbc14deefcf6042b

No serious concerns running the tests in Emacs/Slime, or in a plain REPL. However, when I tried to run clisp point-mutations-test.lisp, Clisp complained that there wasn't any package that defined symbol QL which means that Clisp doesn't load Quicklisp in batch mode. No suggests for that yet.

I vaguely dislike doing (load "tests.lisp"). I think we can do something more REPL friendly, but I don't have a suggestion for that yet, nor do I think it's a serious concern.

from common-lisp.

This looks good -- at least good enough to launch.

The getting started pages are being overhauled, I think the lisp one is in a good place to launch.

Do you know any other lispers who would be willing to check in a few times every week in the beginning to kick off the track?

from common-lisp.

Not many, but I'll ask around. Where exactly would we check in at? Github issues?

from common-lisp.

It would mean going to the exercism.io site to http://exercism.io/nitpick/lisp/recent to comment on people's code.

from common-lisp.

Ok, I posted a request on the local LUG list. It could just be @verdammelt and I for a while, but I'm game to do some nitpicking and being nitpicked.

from common-lisp.

i'm definitely interested in this, just came across exercism.io the other day and i really like the idea, especially since i'm currently learning CL. so while i don't have much (any) lisp expertise to offer, i'll do what i can to help this track succeed

from common-lisp.

Excellent. One thing that is actually really helpful is when someone doesn't have expertise in a language looks at other people's code and asks questions. hey, interesting, how does X work? and I don't understand Y, could you explain it?, and I see X and Y which seem equivalent. Are they stylistic choices, or do you tend to use both but in different circumstances?, etc, etc.

These types of questions tend to spark interesting conversations, and also help push people to articulate things that are usually left as vague gut-feeling type things.

from common-lisp.

great tips, thanks! i'll keep this in mind

from common-lisp.

I am pleased/amazed that this might get off the ground. If it does I'll definitely keep an eye on things and give feedback on submissions. Also I'd start work on fleshing out the rest of the exercises.

from common-lisp.

Awesome, in that case... should I just turn it on today? We can beta-test it for a day or two and then announce it.

from common-lisp.

Just checking on things that are left to be done before we can turn on this exercism track. I think all we still need to do is make sure the problems are in roughly the right order in config.json. I know @wobh added some example defpackage code for rna-transcription, if that doesn't end up being the first problem we should make sure whatever problem is first has this example code.

Anyone have opinions on general ordering of exercises?

from common-lisp.

I don't have any opinions -- it's usually only after people start doing the exercises that we see where they should be in the list :)

from common-lisp.

I think the the remaining things we should do before turning this thing on is:

• update the getting started guide to have better defpackage example (and for the first exercise) (exercism/docs#106)
• update the first exercise to have an example of defpackage (like was done for rna-transcription. (#25)

I'm going to go do the first one.

from common-lisp.

Sounds good.

from common-lisp.

How about when you're ready, turn the active flag on in the config.json? Then the track will go live the next time I deploy the x-api project. We can wait a couple days before announcing it, if we want to sanity-check the website with the track on.

from common-lisp.

is it that simple? I'll do that after doing at least one of the above and announce it here.

from common-lisp.

Yepp, it's that simple :)

from common-lisp.

Merged the docs.

from common-lisp.

I've turned this track on in config.json

from common-lisp.

w00t!

from common-lisp.

Deploying now. I will wait a day before announcing it just so we get a chance to catch egregious omissions before too many eyeballs see it.

from common-lisp.

Looks like @wobh and @ryanbarry already have submissions. But I want to work through a problem on my own before I start nitpicking - so now I need to do that. maybe later tonight.

from common-lisp.

@kytrinyx Do i need to do anything special to fetch the lisp track? My exercism CLI still reports it as inactive. The web pages are letting me see submissions and I can submit my own (by placing the files in the right places for exercism CLI). This is the only problem I've seen so.

from common-lisp.

It looks like I updated and forgot to deploy, dangit!

from common-lisp.

Lol.

@kytrinyx success!

from common-lisp.