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Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal. I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise".

Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms. I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac app and CCL has this wonderful cocoa bridge. If i had to do any java stuff or interface with java, I would probably be using clojure.

If you are interested, I recommend continuing PCL and the lispbox.

If everyone is not moving to fix the problems that you mention, it might mean that they disagree about what the important problems are.

Arc exists as a research effort in thinking about what the next version of lisp should look like, and there are those that feel it is a possible answer to some of your questions.

Scheme is a very essential (e.g. minimalist) implementation of Lisp that is often found in teaching environments.

Don't let the variety scare you--just dive in if you are interested.

2 comments

It may not be for you, but it was for me in the beggining.

I already went through 3 distros - Kurumin, Suse and Ubuntu, and the only reason I still have a Windows partition is to play some games that I couldn't (or didn't bother to) make work under Linux. I can tell you, the bar is very high to start. Ubuntu made it lower (and lower at each version) but it is still too high for mainstream.

And it need not be. The whole problem is always understanding the differences. If I pick that distro or that distro, what changes? What do I lose? What do I earn? Unable to find answers, one doesn't choose lest one chooses poorly.

Lisp implementations are the same.

Thank you for your answers. Allow me to add just two more. If one says Arc is not CL, but a whole new kind of Lisp that tries to solve some of those problems, what exactly are the differences? What does Arc advance as a Lisp standard?

1. choose your lisp dialect: do you want to learn CL, Scheme, Arc, ...?

2. randomly pick an implementation of your chosen lisp. It really makes no difference as a beginner. I speak from experience. You can always switch later in a painless way.

regarding CL, choose an open source implementation if you don't fear things like emacs. If you prefer a more polished IDE, choose a commercial implementation.

CL on Lispbox is what I have now. Which means I use (use being a overstatement) e-Macs with a Lisp extension.

'emacs', please!

SBCL + slime + emacs on linux and you should be fine. Use clbuild to download packages.

I don't really like this analogy because you can more easily shared piece of useful software across Linux distributions than you can across lisp implementations.

True that the differences are limited to things outside the specs, but somehow my applications almost always stepped in these parts.

It is not a matter of software, but a matter of usability. Think of a Windows user only perspective. When installing a distro, you are confronted with the choice between X, KDE, Gnome, Compix, or whatever else Windows Manager is out there now, just to SHOW the Desktop. You haven't even started to use the OS and you must already make decisions about what to Window Manager to use. Most people don't even know what a Window Manager is. Now Google about them and all you will find are people that love their choice and diss all others and all of them seem wonderful in their eyes.

I disagree, you can know quite a bit of lisp and still be caught.

There usually not a lot of development time to rework an application from one distro to the next. Also very rarely you'll need a package that is only available on another distribution. It is the case with CL implementations tough.

I am gonna dive in. You can be sure of that. But I disagree with you when you say that there isn't all that much noise.

The are currently hundreds of distros. All of them serve a purpose. There are ones meant for servers, meant for gaming, meant for low-level machines, meant for coding, ones that work only with strict F.O.S.S software, ones that work with software that is commercial, ones that are paid, that offer support, that don't offer support, but there is a community willing to help, others that let you on your own. There are even ones that mimic Windows XP. And NONE that are user-friendly.

Kurumin is a brazilian distro that gets CLOSE to it, but it is quite lacking. Ubuntu is the nearest possible choice, but it is still not there.

Obviously, once you pick your distro, you have to pick your window manager. Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu? Or maybe there is only one window manager for your distro, but then that nice application you saw on your friend's house belongs to other and is not supported on yours. And how were you suposed to know?

Once you get past the initial trauma, you will eventually reach the point on when you can make your stuff work on any of them, but do you really expect someone that used Windows all his life and can barely install his printer whose drivers are already bult-in on Windows to really make this jump?

And don't even get me started on the different shells. Everyone likes to pretend that there is only Bash out there, but some distros still swear by the original Bourne. Or even CShell.

So, yes, there is a lot of noise.

Ok, so there is a lot of noise.

I picked ubuntu ignoring the noise because it has a nice package system does everything I want, upgrades nicely. No trauma, I ignore the noise. It has the shell I want, and i can trivially change to another shell should I so desire.

So I stand corrected--there is a lot of noise. But I suggest not letting it bother you. Pick one, say ubuntu and go.