Top all-time · #4796
Mikel Evins
Personal blog · mikelevins.github.io/postsprogrammingphilosophy
Mikel Evins writes engine of joy, a personal blog at mikelevins.github.io about programming and philosophy. Since 2021, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “On Repl-Driven Programming (2020)”. The last post was in 2021, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Posts on Common Lisp and REPL-driven development, which commenters cite to explain interactive, image-based programming versus merely having a REPL. Some commenters also cite his essays on art and programming.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- On Repl-Driven Programming (2020)11 people · 20 mentions · first linked 2021-02-08
- Reimagining Apple's Bauhaus OS (2021)3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-06-15
- On Repl-Driven Programming2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-01-03
What Hacker News says?
I could think of many examples, but I'll talk about the top four that I have in mind, that I'd like to see re-evaluated for today's times. 1. When Windows Vista was being developed, there were plans to replace the file system with a database, allowing users to organize and search for files using database queries. This was known as WinFS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS ). I was looking forward to this in the mi…
Comment linking /posts/2021-07-12-reimagining-bauhaus/
on “Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?”Submitted On Repl-Driven Programming as a story · 394 points
HN discussionI disagree. I think it’s useful to distinguish repl-driven development from development that merely has incidental access to some kind of repl. That’s the topic of this blog post: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Tutorial Series to learn Common Lisp quickly”Submitted On Repl-Driven Programming (2020) as a story · 100 points
HN discussionI’ve never did anything serious with Common Lisp, but my light experience on it was that - the idea that almost all language constructs are user-implementable with macros is quite impressive (but I don’t buy the argument that “real” macros are only able in s-exprs) - and the REPL-driven development model was a really beautiful and seamless experience. But… every time I try to use it on some code, I find too many war…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Tutorial Series to learn Common Lisp quickly”Submitted On Repl-Driven Programming as a story · 15 points
HN discussionMikel Evins has written two articles you might find interesting: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-02-03-programming-as...
Comment linking /posts/2020-02-03-programming-as-teaching/
on “Why Lisp?”Submitted Reimagining Apple's Bauhaus OS (2021) as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI sympathize, but unfortunately Tim Cook's stewardship of the Mac, from the embrace of soldered RAM and even storage throughout the Mac lineup, to the increasing annoyances of macOS either in the name of security (e.g., notarization, the popups that request permission to read user directories, which is really annoying when using LLVM's debugger in modern macOS) or to help advertise Apple's subscription services, hav…
Comment linking /posts/2021-07-12-reimagining-bauhaus/
on “XFCE 4.20 aims to bring preliminary Wayland support”Submitted On repl-driven programming: What Python and irb is not as a story · 3 points
HN discussionan actually difficult question! Different persons will absorb different things from articles, and will enjoy different projects as a first encounter. Pointers: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ (and see the Emacs or the debugging pages to see what's possible) see https://www.youtube.com/@CBaggers/playlists and either his introductions to Slime, either his introductions to CEPL to play with graphics interac…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Homoiconic Python”Submitted Reimagining Apple's Bauhaus OS as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI think this relatively short blogpost does an excellent job of answering your question: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “A Road to Common Lisp (2018)”Submitted On REPL-driven programming (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionNot anymore, today Common Lisp is generally a very nice language that balances dynamicity and performance quite well, and especially shines in interactive (or REPL-driven) development: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Show HN: "Programming Algorithms in Lisp” Book”for the developer experience also see mike levins' article on repl driven programming https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “A Road to Common Lisp (2018)”ah, I see. There's another shorter one below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsHxgP3SRTs In that one I get the debugger, I go to the erroneous function, I re-compile it, come back to the debugger and resume execution (seeing everything pass). Can you do that in Clojure? There's also the typical class change: in CL you can alter a class definition and the existing objects are (lazily) updated. Also (and it's like th…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Why Hy?”This set of jupyter + autoreloads + editor features might get you close, but you won't be on par to CL's level. I'm thinking about CL's interactive debugger, and about language features that were thought with interactivity in mind. On an error, you get the interactive debugger, you can explore the stack frames and get to the erroneous function, change it, recompile it, come back to the debugger and ask it to resume…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Why Hy?”Very cool! Thanks for sharing the dots! I'm a vim user too, but recently I've been considering Common Lisp mainly due to this post: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ so I did a brief tour on Emacs (cause everyone uses sly) but both Emacs and CL take too much time so I've postponed them. Would be nice if you describe your vim+cl workflow and how does it hold up to Emacs+Sly+Org-mode ™
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Emacs-like editors written in Common Lisp”I wrote a blog post entitled "Art is not optional" ( https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2021-01-04-art-is-not-opt... ) that is in part about this: I don't think people usually choose to be artists. I think they mostly just are, like it or not. In terms of personality psychology, they're "creatives"--that is, people that score extremely high in trait openness. Like you, I write because I must. I don't choose to write…
Comment linking /posts/2021-01-04-art-is-not-optional/
on “‘What a brutal business’: pop stars on life after the spotlight moves on”Related: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ https://hyperthings.garden/posts/2021-06-20/hell-is-other-re... They say Common Lisp (and Smalltalk) provide the "best" REPL experience.
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “What makes a good REPL? (2017)”This is my attempt at explaining but honestly it is not so easy! https://lisp-journey.gitlab.io/pythonvslisp/ see also https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ It is actually not about a "REPL" but "image-based" development. It is WAY ahead of the Python REPL, which was already a relief for me. The Python REPL is archaic in comparison.
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “I Just Can't Kick Lisp”One of the other comments in this thread links to: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ which makes a distinction between "having a REPL" and "supporting repl-driven programming". Modern languages which have a REPL generally don't support the sort of repl-driven programming they refer to. Julia's Revise.jl [1] supports one way of repl-driven programming, and it is in fact the recommended way of…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “What are the enduring innovations of Lisp? (2022)”This blog post explains the sort of workflow a Lisp/Smalltalk-style REPL enables: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “What are the enduring innovations of Lisp? (2022)”The article appears to be here: http://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “On Repl-Driven Programming”The language is a "reasonable" Lisp, with the caveat that it doesn't have things like reader macros (which is a good thing IMO, and helps avoid the Curse of Lisp). The runtime/REPL is pretty good too, and can be quite dynamic with Revise.jl, but doesn't have the Real REPL-driven Programming Experience™ as defined here: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/ I'm not sure how much of the "breakloop…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Julia and Mojo (Modular) Mandelbrot Benchmark”Not exactly what you asked for but, if you have time, I would recommend looking at Practical Common Lisp: https://gigamonkeys.com/book/ And also this blog post (which is a much smaller time commitment): https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Steel – An embedded scheme interpreter in Rust”the python debugger is cool but is an inferior experience. It isn't only about a REPL, but about the editing experience, and about the language being thought from the ground up for long-living programs. See: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “A Road to Lisp: Why Lisp”To really discover what interactive, image-based CL development is about, my pointers: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBBS4FeY7XM (5min) my demo to show how to resume execution of a long running program, from the stack frame right before the bug, after having fixed and recompiled the function, without quitting the debugger hence without stopping the program, thus without restarting everything from zero. - https:/…
Comment linking /posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
on “Interactive Common Lisp Development”
