Path: csiph.com!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!nntp.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Paul Rubin Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Making production games in Common Lisp Date: Thu, 13 Aug 2026 17:31:52 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 34 Message-ID: <87h5kxpmo7.fsf@nightsong.com> References: <110a9pp$ckmk$6@dont-email.me> <111ne5o$vsm3$3@dont-email.me> <111pbk6$36pi7$1@dont-email.me> <111sb7u$3ua8h$7@dont-email.me> <8fj54lpvg7v6mhi9r9u39tpojbjage8br4@4ax.com> <87mrwdyt0t.fsf@nightsong.com> <1127cho$34rpg$3@dont-email.me> <112o4aa$cpek$2@dont-email.me> <87jyqdtumj.fsf@gmail.com> <87bjbn2nhs.fsf@safunu.org> <877bm4zgsp.fsf@safunu.org> <1150b48$3blde$3@dont-email.me> <87h5l1so79.fsf@safunu.org> <874igztumy.fsf@safunu.org> <87jypujbdt.fsf@safunu.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:31:53 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; logging-data="2212772"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1831+mdw9XNjntNGyCjDPvh"; posting-host="1b41c6b6b22cc46ee8f732fba3e8ed1a" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.1 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:xoxvea7yPzXcyLwIU7hOu4niofo= sha1:9xIKE+HBxd/PefAPdWxC8F18xm8= sha256:xWfD4c7swbllcOCXdLAp1Q8GZcjPkpgencBsSum4XxQ= sha1:7qw/3N2plCHlRajJ23YnQ3fIU/g= sha256:vMo/1T9kvk6CIFLd36w6Ev6zeY1whHwfiqWR09e3kWc= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.lisp:61456 Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson writes: > Hm, as-is, there seems to be a /blank/ in my knowledge, when it comes to > thinking of an equivalent book in Lisp. Specifically about these /patt- > erns/, and how to use them. Winston and Horn "Lisp" was a favorite way back in the day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP_(book) It was originally part of the book "Artificial Intelligence" but the Lisp part split off into a separate volume, per the Wikipedia article above. The thing is, CL's design makes some sense, but only up to a point. It's not holistic like Scheme, so don't expect too much consistency. CL's unifying purpose was to maintain some level of commonality with a bunch of incompatible predecessor Lisps of varying origin. It didn't try to run earlier dialects without modification, but it tried to keep the porting effort manageable, as I understand it. Old timers here will know more about this than I do. There are some good history documents around whose names I don't remember. In my case I found CLTL1 to be pretty understandable after first gaining an understanding of Lisp by reading through the Emacs Lisp interpreter source code (written in C) and mucking around with some Emacs Lisp code. The CADR manual was also enlightening, even though I never actually used a CADR or any other Lisp machine (I guess that's a sign of a deprived childhood). See: https://tumbleweed.nu/r/lm-3/uv/chinual.html As for Scheme, I think of it more as an assembly language for a cosmic sized computer, than as something for humans program much in directly. Others believe the opposite.