Lisp: No easy download

by helveticaman on 9/6/2009, 5:20 AM with 30 comments
  • by runevault on 9/6/2009, 5:30 AM

    I dunno which is a bigger problem, this or the massive library pain issue.

    Of course now that Clojure is out there I don't know if CL really COULD gain traction, most people who want a Lisp for "real work" are going that route, or have gone in other power language directions like Haskell, or so it appears from where I'm standing.

  • by zoba on 9/6/2009, 12:27 PM

    http://www.gigamonkeys.com/lispbox/

    Lispbox makes it really easy to download and get going with Lisp.

  • by arb on 9/6/2009, 10:09 AM

    There are at least five links on the first page of results searching Google for "common lisp download": http://sbcl.sourceforge.net/platform-table.html http://clisp.cons.org/ http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gcl/ http://www.franz.com/downloads/ http://www.lispworks.com/downloads/

    It's true there is no one link, but his examples suffer a related problem -- no links are provided to Jython, IronPython, JRuby, etc., which is misleading if marginally more convenient.

    That said, do people typically download releases, even of Perl, Python or Ruby implementations? I've only used distro packages or RCS checkouts of any of those systems. Is this mainly an issue for Windows or Mac users?

  • by 10ren on 9/6/2009, 7:21 AM

    "In order to download lisp, one must first download lisp."

    Antiviral marketing.

  • by hvs on 9/6/2009, 6:42 AM

    This post is from May 2008 and I couldn't find a link to download Lisp anywhere on his site.

    I don't disagree with his point, but over a year to make good on his promise doesn't speak well of his argument.

  • by aerique on 9/6/2009, 6:54 AM

    Ha, good point! I've been using CL for quite a few years now so this issue isn't even on my radar. But this question could be asked for C++ and probably Scheme as well.

    This is a 'problem' for languages with no single implementation that's easily solved by Google. "common lisp download" gives the CLISP site as top hits which is a good CL to start with.

  • by on 9/7/2009, 3:21 AM

    undefined

  • by jonjacky on 9/6/2009, 11:51 PM

    It's Scheme not CL, but the PLT Scheme/Dr Scheme download and install was easy enough for many in my introductory programming class to get through without help (this was years ago already).

  • by Tichy on 9/6/2009, 9:58 AM

    apt-get install

  • by tsally on 9/6/2009, 7:10 AM

    Step 1: Try doing concurrent programming in Common Lisp.

    Step 2: Switch to Clojure.