Just spent a good half hour pulling my hair out trying to figure out why one of the #elisp functions I had just written was always returning nil when I tested it. Turns out, my test was mistakenly passing its inputs to the wrong (but similarly named) function (pivot-table-get-columns instead of pivot-table-get-body).
It sounds like the sort of thing a more type-ful Lisp implementation would have detected too. I bet SBCL would have have given you a compiler note warning of an analogous problem, for example.
So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
I have a function, pivot-table-get-columns (shorthanded as pt-get-columns). Its job is to take an #OrgMode table and produce an alist of mappings of column names to column numbers. The column names are as defined by section 3.5.10 of the org-mode manual.
Edit: I've been beating my head against a wall for some time on this getting nowhere and less than a minute after asking this, I see it. My first unless should be a when. I'll fix it later.
what does org table source look like by the way? I normally pass org tables into org source blocks (where they become s-expressions in lisp), but I'm not sure what the tables look like internally to org.
further about eq in common lisp at least, I've seen people make a mistake before- when you compile code, if you referred to "" twice, in common lisp compilers are allowed to coalesce them at which point they /will/ be eq. (Eq would be a good test to see if they /had/ been coalesced). But in the general case two strings entered in different places are not eq.
@screwlisp I've not seen the comma prefix used outside a macro before. Also, this would probably be better written as: (push (cons (format "%s" cell) n) result)
it is very exciting! commas have to appear inside backticks, and backticks are just quotes that can have certain things inside of them unquoted (using a comma).
Macros to a large extent work like this because one principle of lisp is that lisp code be regular lisp sequences. At read time, the function names are just symbols. So it's a list of symbols/atoms and lists.
However, sometimes we /do/ want to run some code, hence backtick and comma/unquote.
Backquote forms are merely list (S-expression) constructors where some pieces are constant and some pieces are evaluated. (The latter are marked with commas.) Such forms can be used anywhere. Obviously they are often used in macros, because macro functions construct lists (S-expressions).
I often write `(,foo ,bar) instead of (list foo bar) because the former seems clearer, especially when the structure is more involved.
Auf YouTube findest du die angesagtesten Videos und Tracks. Außerdem kannst du eigene Inhalte hochladen und mit Freunden oder gleich der ganzen Welt teilen.
We increasingly hear about China travellers who use #deltachat successfully where Whatsapp and Signal fail to work. Recently a family onboarded including a 85 old mother, to prepare for China travel. Everbody succeeded, no troubles!
#deltachat is all about resiliency and "just works" user experiences. Despite ongoing and prospective network blocking attempts, our apps manage to mitigate and remain working everywhere. Meanwhile we are preparing some next level resiliency/security features ;)
@tomstoneham we will see to eventually write things up. But popular email servers inside china are used as well. We don't have numbers for obvious reasons. So far we have not done any active outreach to china. Fwiw it's usually the first language fully translated within hours after we update English UI strings or the web page.
@aronn yes many of us want to see native audio/video calls become reality.It would greatly help if we had funding to hire contributors to get this done on all platforms sooner rather than later.
@Delta Chat I wonder what additional resilience is possible for an app using mail client protocols. Doesn't it boil down to whether IMAP connection to the mail server is available?
@shuro delta has different ways to connect to chatmail relays already today. Blocking eg the IMAPS port does not prevent successful operations. The problem in describing too many details about our resiliency features in public is that we would ease the attackers work. Countering network blockades and fragmentation is ultimately a cat and mouse game. Later in the year we plan to write more about this.
@Delta Chat Thanks, I read the documentation on chatmail relay and I seem to get the idea. Not sure about real censorship but it should certainly help with passing corporate firewalls as many restrict mail ports.
Now I want my mail server to have this too 😀 I like the idea of Delta Chat using normal mail server though so consider posting official instructions on expected configuration for DC to failover/prefer HTTPS. Maybe omit any circumvention trickery if any. I seem to understand how it works from the source code but it would be nice to have concise documentation.
Adapting chatmail relays, or some parts of it, to non-debian12 systems, or docker, or junohost or non postfix/dovecot systems or different TLS-cert setups etc. is all interesting but nothing that the chatmail relay dev team will focus on any time soon. If you figure something out, it could be linked from the current relay repo or maybe chatmail.at
Chatmail provides FOSS infrastructure for interoperable, secure, speedy and reliable end-to-end encrypted messaging. Check out clients as Arcane Chat, Bots or Delta Chat today!
@Delta Chat I meant not this but rather describing (or maybe it is out there somewhere already?) specification of Delta Chat port discovery.
Something like: "if you want DC to failover to HTTPS port on your mail server you need to add this SRV record... / this autodiscover.xml file in your webroot following this syntax..."
I kind of get what Delta Chat expects to see by looking at the source code and existing relays but it would be nice to know official spec - e.g. like XMPP or Matrix clearly define how clients discover ports and what servers should/may return to them.
@shuro there is no official spec for the network setup. Again, if you do a write up of your findings after your source code study, it might get linked from the repo/site.
Services are distinguished based on ALPN.
For example,
openssl s_client -connect example.org:443 -alpn smtp
gives SMTP connection and
openssl s_client -connect example.org:443 -alpn imap
gives IMAP...
are you saying that delta chat has been blocked in china but is able to employ mitigations that have succeeded where signal's haven't? is onboarding to deltachat easier than onboarding to the use of a vpn or proxy as is standard for users in heavily censored networks?
@hipsterelectron no, we are not aware of specific Chinese blocking attempts currently. The blocking attempts we mentioned happen with a different country, and another one is currently gearing up (more about the latter probably next week).
So, keeping a #journal in #teeline has had some unexpected benefits for my #ADHD brain beyond my handwriting just being more able to keep up with the rate of my thoughts.
I might blog about this later, but the TL;DR is that the process of transcribing my entries requires me to think deliberately about the meaning of every word I've written.
For all the criticism I have of dynamically typed languages, I have to admit that the way #elisp (and presumably #lisp in general) does in-line documentation is pretty nice.
The seemingly canonical way of detecting whether the C-u modifier was used on an interactive function call (when an actual numerical argument wasn't provided) in #elisp feels... icky. #emacs
Nintendo in my email today: We have updated our terms of service. If you agree, do literally nothing. If you disagree, please jump through the hoops necessary to delete your account.
Why is #TyreNichols not trending on #mastodon ????? This is a black man that was murdered by memphis police and were acquitted by an ALL WHITE jury ! He lay on the ground asking for help from his momma while the cops kicked him to death. If y'all ain't racist on this app shout out this injustice 🗣🗣 #blacklivesmatter #BlackMastodon RIP Tyre ❤️
it is incomprehensible to me how cruel these police officers are. I can’t imagine how hard it must be as a Black person to know that this is a constant danger when simply moving around in your daily life. And it breaks my heart to know that Tyre Nichols called out for his mom. RIP, beautiful soul.
Jaden, 1) Mt timeline is usually fairly quiet this time of day so later in the day there might be more talk about him 2) Sadly, Mastodon has a problem with racism, it's too often ignored, even most moderators are not trained how to identify and deal with it, or don't want to ...likely the latter... ☹️
@SnowshadowII I've seen quite a few toots about the case (mostly from USA, but some in German).
"Hard news" tends not to always make the "trending" sections of Fediverse, same as other social media many folk are still hoping to get escapism/hedonism and avoid "bad news" (I notice this myself, for instance a toot about funny animals gets way more engagement than a heavier one about road safety or crime reports)
In the entire Fediverse that's true, I agree, however, over in North America I see plenty of shared toots and discussions about American politics but rarely about American racism. I'm sensing there's a denial . Perhaps the reason why it isn't trending on the Fediverse is many people, those of us outside the country, look at the US atrocities and think, "That's awful, but that's "another day in the USA, when will they stop this.". It's rough being outside their borders, watching this and feeling helpless to stop it.
@SnowshadowII thats definitely a big factor. A lot of people outside USA are now increasingly viewing the entire country as a failed state, and not really in any position to do anything about it (its no longer even safe for us to visit USA for business or leisure, as it seems we could be nicked by ICE for just about anything) - and it is becoming no more an appealing holiday destination than Ukraine, Gaza, India/Pakistan border areas etc..
@SnowshadowII @vfrmedia Snow, the only thing I can think of to say to fellow white people here in the states is……..not really printable. I left a local app yesterday so that I could calm down enough to hopefully figure what to DO.
One of my kids is now researching asylum and immigration. She wanted to go a long time back, but her partner didn’t think it would get “too bad”.
The perps were only found innocent on state charges. "Despite being found not guilty in state court, **all three have been convicted in federal court and face time in federal prison**. Sentencing for the federal case was postponed until the state case ended. Bean and Smith were found guilty in the federal case of witness tampering and face up to 20 years in federal prison." knoxnews.com/story/news/2025/0…
Adding to my reply: I feel physically ill whenever I see another Black person murdered by police, and what turns my stomach more is this is not a unique case and yet it is allowed to continue! What will it take for Americans to join together to force the government to make police responsible for their actions, white people being killed, will then Americans rise up?
@SnowshadowII The thing is that numerically, US cops do kill more White people. Proportionally, it's more Black people.
A conversation I once saw on the bird site has always stuck with me: A White person replied to a Black woman, "cops kill more White people than Black people every year and you don't see us out protesting." She replied, "why wouldn't you?"
White people often think that if a White person falls afoul of the law, they did something. Black people know better.
@SnowshadowII "Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for roughly 14 percent of the U.S. population and are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans."
> During the trial, prosecutors said that the officers had become "overcome by the moment". > "Nobody is going to call them monsters," said prosecutor Paul Hagerman. "It doesn't take monsters to kill a man.
… so racist brutality is acceptable if you’re a bit over-excited, is it? It fucking does take monsters, monsters all the way up to the top.
A similar thing happened to me, except it wasn't cops and I was only officially dead for under 10 minutes
When i watched the videos of his murder i was screaming in pain for him... and when he cried to see his mom, that broke me. I have immense survivor's guilt and there iss no reason Tyre should not be alive today except for those cops
I pray for his family and fir all the others that have state violence inflicted on them undeserved
The question I'm asking is why Memphis hasn't broken out into full-on riots yet. As soon as I heard the verdict, I thought the city would erupt. #TyreNichols
Wrapping my brain around using #org-mode as a spreadsheet. Is there a way to pass a range of cells as a vector to a custom function? Ideally, I'd like to embed this function into the file itself. #emacs
That shows you how to define a column formula with elisp. I think think usual "vsum" and friends are vector operations from the emacs calculator, so it seems very likely?
I gotta go to the bike shop, but my heuristic would be:
1. I know vsum works in org-mode spreadsheet formulas 2. I know the v stands for "vector" 3. Can I use that function's source to define my own vector operations?
I like to think the answer is YES. I am hopeful at least.
@Shae Erisson So, of appears that I can pass simple (single cell) references into raw elisp functions, but not ranges. I'll have to have a closer look at vsum as mentioned earlier to see if there's a solution there.
I would be interested if you manage to read org tables as lisp lists. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to do it occasionally, so cfw would get an org-table import/export. Currently it can do CSV.
Hi @me If you insert a formula in a table cell #orgmode will put it after the table in a special line (so you can see and edit it after) and insert the result in place. Of course, it can be recalculated anytime you want to.
With a whole bunch of folks leaving MS Word and similar as of late, seems like the right time to post this again, but I put together a little resource to help explain *why* it's so important to ditch Word and similar.
I even have my e-mail signature set to remind people to be careful before opening things in Word; after all, it can be really easy to accidentally betray trust by opening a draft.
(If "consider before printing this e-mail" is a thing, avoiding carbon-chugging LLMs has to be at *least* as important.)
the article makes a very good point about MS Office using any documents, including those from other people, to train their LLMs. I mean if you accept MS terms, fine. But people who send you documents (which may have been created with Libreoffice) have not agreed to any of those terms. Makes me wonder if the terms of service are even legal...
@Cassandra Granade 🏳️⚧️ 95% of the time, what I want to do can be achieved with a simple text editor and a markdown file (though these days I tend to use org-mode instead). Using a word processor at all is usually overkill in the first place.
I think the article is perhaps a bit verbose and long-winded to win over a lot of laypeople / disinterested office workers. Adding a "tl;dr: opening documents in Word/GDocs automatically uploads the contents for AI training without the author's consent. Consider alternatives like LibreOffice" might help.
Also, you used the term "LLM" before you use the term "large language model", and the target audience probably doesn't already know what LLM stands for. Same with GAN.
Thanks to everyone who's pointed out that the page is very difficult to read on some systems; I have not had that happen on any of the laptops and/or phones that I have access to, so I wasn't able to notice that earlier, and I apologize for the accessibility issues that creates.
I'm not, unfortunately, a professional webdev, and have found it a little challenging to make a plain HTML page that works everywhere.
Someone in DMs very kindly suggested a fix, and I'll look at applying that ASAP.
I *think* it should be fixed? On my laptop and phone, it looks identical to how it used to, but it now doesn't fix the zoom level in CSS, such that hopefully it should work well in more browsers and on more devices.
Thanks again to everyone who let me know about the problem, and for the kind person who suggested a fix in DMs.
I guess you could fairly easily write a macro that automatically created a lexical scope and added some prefixes to variable used within its body - Doug Hoyte's "Let over lambda" book has #CommonLisp examples of this kind of approach as way to cut down the syntactic overhead of using gensym in macros. Without much thought, I'd assume something similar could be done in #EmacsLisp
@The ol' tealeg 🐡 I'm thinking something a little more robust involving using a symbol's property list to store everything contained within that namespace.
I'm probably biting off more than I can chew at this point in my understanding of elisp, but I'm sure this idea will stick around in my brain until I have enough of an understanding to pull it (or something comparable) off.
...or I find some already existing thing that does what I want (which is more likely).
SBCL, for example, has the in-package macro set the value of the special variable *PACKAGE* which, I guess, would then ultimately get used in every definition and reference.
I haven't having looked at it, but I imagine that it mostly comes down to switching out in-buffer eval functions to those which are current-package aware. If you resolve and swap out all symbols with their "absolute" versions during definition, you should be able to call that code from different namespaces without problems.
where (:use nil) serves the same purpose as (:use :cl) in Common Lisp.
Afterwards, you can either do
(in-namespace :foo) ...
or
(with-namespace :foo ...)
You should also be able to file-locally set `buffer-namespace', but I haven't tried it.
Here's a working snippet:
(define-namespace :foo (:use nil) (:export bar setq nil))
(define-namespace :baz (:use :foo) (:export bar))
(with-namespace :foo (setq foo 2))
foo:bar ;; => 2
(with-namespace :baz (setq bar 5) (setq quux 10))
foo:bar ;; => 5 baz:bar ;; => 5 baz:quux ;; => 10
although you'll need to patch elisp--preceding-sexp for C-x C-e to see the individual values. Here's the code you need to evaluate (at least on my version, I suggest trying this in a fresh emacs in case something goes wrong): 0x0.st/84sj.txt
I have fleshed it out more (or rather, ported over CL's packages): git.sr.ht/~thuna/cl-package (this is still the same repo, but I've changed the name).
The demo is: - require cl-package / load cl-package.el - require cl-package-reader / load cl-package-reader.el - go to a new buffer (or the scratch buffer) - M-x cl-package-activate-reader RET - Insert the snippet - Do eval-buffer, or after applying the same patch as before (replace `(read...)' with `(funcall load-read-function...)' in `elisp--preceding-sexp') go through each form (you can skip cl-in-package) one by one with C-x C-e - Have fun
The snippet is:
(cl-defpackage test (:use :global) (:shadow baz) (:export baz))
Where the second nil means that no symbol with the literal name "test:baz" exists in emacs, and that the symbol we're referring to with test:baz is something else entirely, which you can also see with:
(eq (intern "test:baz") 'test:baz) => nil
There are probably a lot of problems, some of which are: - defpackage does not play nice with redefinitions (or rather, you can't do it at all), just pop cl-package-registry (but not completely, always leave the last item, if you want to fully reset it set it to (list obarray)) and redefine it again - I have the elisp runtime in the pseudo-package :global, but trying to use :global in your own package will force it to check all (tens of thousands of!) symbols for conflicts, so it'll take a couple seconds during the defpackage in the snippet. I will later define packages containing the various elisp packages for proper modularity, so it should get better - Once you evaluate cl-in-package, eval-buffer starts with cl-in-package, which it probably shouldn't be doing, but I don't know and who knows how many more!
@screwtape Oh come on you understand the situation perfectly ;) You can write hacks to make it look like there are namespaces, but at the end of the day, they are just hacks.
There has been multiple discussions about it on emacs-devel, and there is no way to get elisp out of the dark ages until the usual suspects are replaced. Which is not happening any time soon.
@screwlisp @Nicolas Martyanoff If you think I'd actually have anything interesting to say. I feel I can't really hold a candle to some of your previous guests. I'm just aimlessly noodling around with stuff.
You know I like to set an extremely low bar for quality personally. And after all, everyone eats at your sushi place every week...!
It's also interesting to everyone to get opinions on common lisp from the outside or somewhat recent arrivals. I think you and jeremy_list are both interesting as sort of Haskell/MOO/emacs/common lispers.
Counterpointing the "golang for serious business" long-time lisp-heads like @galdor
So, I've finally settled on a technique to keep shimmer inks from clogging my #FountainPens and it's working well, but it's not exactly condusive to writing in #teeline which is what I use 90% of the time these days.
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
It always amuses me whenever I think about the fact that I got one of my favourite #FountainPens for free with a bottle of ink. It's even more amusing that I've never inked that pen up with that ink.
@Kate McDonald It's a bit of a pain to work with because I only use it with a dip pen* and have to juggle that with a UV flashlight. That aside, it works really well. Completely invisible under normal lighting conditions and shows up really well under UV.
* Because I feel that cleaning it out of a regular pen would be a pain.
@jlamothe Ah it looks so fun! You've made me excited again about trying my sample. I got mine with the intention of using it for letters to my nephews . . . one of these years I will gift them a UV flashlight and then I can send them letters to read with it 😀
So, with this past #Inkvent calendar, I've found myself in possession of a bunch of shimmering inks. Problem is that they tend to clog my #FountainPens. Are there any inexpensive pens that handle shimmering inks well?
I've found that my Wing Sung 3008s don't clog up much anyway, and when they do they're easy to take apart to clean them, at least once you know how. Also cheap enough to be disposable once they break. 😀 The downside is that they're known for cracking and/or the screw in the cap rusting, hence the importance of being cheap.
I've cleaned out two this weekend - I can't usually get the last little bits of glitter out, but what's left doesn't seem to block it when reassembled.
huh, weird. Which ink? There are some in the inkvent that have larger and too much shimmer and is basically for dip pens as far as I'm concerned, I don't remember what they're marked with - not shimmer or chameleon but something like star bright or something.
@redbanjer 🪕🇺🇦🇨🇦🇬🇱🇲🇽 Yeah, dip pens were my go-to solution. It's just annoying to have to keep mixing up the ink in the bottle in addition to continually dipping the pen.
I bought a few of those small plastic "Dinky Dips" ink containers- they come in three sizes. I can use my ink syringe to put some of my shimmer ink into a Dinky, add a drop or two of Gum Arabic (to help make it more dip nib friendly), and it's a better size--- you can use the dip nib to stir the ink each time you dip it in, since it's not that deep and the container mouth is wide (straight up and down shape). Inks stores well in it, the plastic cap screws tight. Just a thought!
It looks like I wasn't moving the pen enough. As I would keep writing, the shimmer would collect in the feed until it just straight-up clogged. I didn't realize I had to periodically roll the pen around even while I was actively using it. This should have been obvious by the fact that my writing kept getting more and more, well... shimmery before the ink stopped flowing.
I'll try this approach in the future.
Rookie mistake, but in my defense, I didn't even know that shimmer inks were even a thing until late last year.
I have successfully built my first #Emacs package. I want to clean it up a bit before I consider releasing it though. Also, while I can build a simple (single file) package, buildig a multi-file one is still eluding me.
When I try to install it, I get the following (less than helpful) error message: Wrong type argument: stringp, nil
Is there a way I can get more detail on why this is failing?
If you use M-x toggle-debug-on-error, you should get a full stack trace showing what was called, with what value and from where. That should at least get you started.
So getting a stack trace doesn't seem to have provided any useful additional information, but I have a potential starting point. When I look at the auto-generated *-pkg.el file from the installed single file version, I notice that there are some additional parameters passed to define-package that were not mentioned in the elisp documentation.
To demonstrate that I'm not crazy, this is from section 42.3 of the elisp manual: Function: define-package name version &optional docstring requirements
This is from the documentation for define-package: (define-package NAME-STRING VERSION-STRING &optional DOCSTRING REQUIREMENTS &rest EXTRA-PROPERTIES)
So Katy has a #Jinhao10 and today the clicker seems to be jamming. When pressed, it seems to resist extending or retracting the nib. I'm giving it a cleaning right now to make sure there was no debris or anything in there stopping it from working, but I don't know if that'll fix it.
Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a fix?
Is the trap door opening/closing properly? It could be wedged somehow. You should be able to poke the nib unit through it manually with the top removed and see if it works as expected.
Also when it's apart you can press the rear of the nib unit up into the tail and press the button and see if it operates normally that way.
Then you at least know which end of the pen is misbehaving.
@Jim P. It looks like there was some debris caught in the mechanism. A good cleaning seems to have resolved the issue. I'm a little confused as to where it came from though.
Coming down off a panic attack relapse. I'm medicated and laying in bed in the dark. I don't know of this was the right strategy, but I needed to stop the fireworks in my brain, and shutting out as much external stimulus as possible seemed the right thing to do.
As a side note, I'm now pretty much convinced I'm somewhere on the spectrum. This felt a lot like the way I've heard an autistic meltdown to be. Sounds were particularly jarring. Katy was packing up her equipment to send back to her old job and the sound of the packing tape was actually painful.
I can think of a number of other incidents where I've become seemingly irrationally agitated at something that should have been a minor thing, and any form of external stimulus whatsoever only made it worse (which really sucks when people try to "help").
That's very much an AS response. Some noises, physical sensations, environments are just intolerable, as if they're actively attacking your brain the way allergens do your immune system.
Finding out that my responses to things were *real*, and not just me being temperamental, was a big help.
Katy likes these YouTube channels where they teach about canning and such. One of the people in one of these videos is wearing a shirt with what looks like an AR-15 that says "defense is not a crime".
What in the cinnamon toast fuck do you need an AR-15 to defend yourself from?
How about: The current version of the Stazi (rhymes with mice), PB and III%er paramilitary and the right wing meal team 6 deplorables who are itching to use one of the 20 million AR’s that are out there right now. If you don’t want one, don’t buy one. Hope this helps
Got my hair cut for the first time in probably a year because I have an interview tomorrow for a job I really want to get (and think I have a pretty good shot at).
It looks decent, but has revealed a good deal more grey than I'm accustomed to seeing.
This morning Katy noticed a rash all around my neck. I can only attribute it to the new (to me) shirt I wore yesterday. It's like my body has revolted against wearing a shirt and tie ever again.
Remind your kids not to handle any Easter eggs they find outside; if they do, the mother bunny won’t return to the nest and nobody will feed the baby Jesus when the eggs hatch.
We just filled out the card for my niece's wedding. We took some time to figure out the perfect wording, select the right ink and nib, practice my handwriting so that it was on point, and after all that, I finally came to the realisation that I'm not certain as to whether or not she's old enough to have been taught cursive.
1. LLM-generated code tries to run code from online software packages. Which is normal but 2. The packages don’t exist. Which would normally cause an error but 3. Nefarious people have made malware under the package names that LLMs make up most often. So 4. Now the LLM code points to malware.
I was surprised for a few seconds, then realized of course LLMs are just making up package names. They’re imitating real code, not actually coding. They don’t think or understand.
TIL that Instacart now charges a "membership" to get higher priority on assignment of batches. This does not guarantee you anything, it just allows them to further exploit a workforce they're already working to the bone.
Do they not realize that many (if not most) of the people who are working this job are doing it because they don't really have any other options? And they expect them to pay for the privilege now?
Just when I thought they couldn't possibly get any more predatory, they pull this shit.
Also, I get the whole "don't bite the hand that feeds you" thing. I might take that more seriously if it was actually feeding me. Mostly it just slaps me in the face.
@Karsten Johansson I'd say so. When I say Real World, I mean somewhere where one can earn a living with it. Sadly, I know next to nothing about quantum computing though.
@larry77 Lisp is a symbolic language, which lends itself handily to the symbolic data inherent to quantum computing. You'll see a lot of macro use as a result.
And Lisp is interactive. So is Python, but you don't have nearly the amount of malleability for experimentation with Python. The fact that you can move things around without breaking the code counts when you're dealing with multiple individual qbits.
Yep, quite a few places, though they generally don’t talk about it much. Quantum computing, chip design, logistics, and drug discovery are a few that come to mind.
If I were to make a broad generalization, they tend to be fields where deep subject and algorithmic expertise is more valuable than relatively more-easily-replaced developers.
Which is, of course, not to say that e.g. Python/JavaScript/etc developers don’t also need subject matter expertise, but the necessary understanding is generally shallower and less entangled with the algorithmic complexity.
(Again, painting with a very broad brush here.)
There’s also an axis of software lifecycle, too. If you’re constantly changing requirements it’s less valuable to remember last year’s nuances. Different economics than if you need to ship something stable for years.
@curtosis I have to say, the kind of job that would be looking for Lisp developers sounds like the kind of environment I might actually want to work in. I've been pretty depressed about the state of the modern tech industry.
The last dev job I had kinda burnt me out because every month or so, I was on to an entirely different project and never had a chance to develop that deep level of domain knowledge on anything. It was very frustrating.
We gather example companies that we find here: github.com/azzamsa/awesome-lis… Mind you it's nothing official. There are job offers sometimes on reddit, but also on the two LinkedIn groups, sometimes on Twitter alone, and sometimes you get a direct message (happened).
There are many in the quantum space, such as HLR labs. reddit's /u/stylewarning works for it. They released the impressive Coalton and even contribute to SBCL.
HLR, Ravenpack and Keepit are probably still hiring.
Personally, as a solo developer, I use CL more and more in my stack, ditching Python the more I can. I wrote about it: lisp-journey.gitlab.io/blog/ru…
Instead of extending a Python software I write independent modules in CL. It works well for standalone scripts too (read a DB, process data, send everything to a FTP, to a web service, by email…) It's such a joy.
Recently, the awesome-lisp-companies list was posted on HN, more people got to know it (look, this list is fan-cooked and we add companies when we learn about one, often by chance, don’t assume it’s anything “official” or exhaustive), and Alex Nygren…
I used Common-Lisp on a few professional production projects; a data transformation system for moving data between two companys' different systems. An event processing engine that applies weird complex rules to GPS tracking locations. A web micro-service or two to support some mobile apps. All of those services, except maybe the first, are still running in production. Plus, of course, a few personal projects here and there.
Marco Bresciani
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •