Paragon Initiative Enterprises wrote a nice blog entry on how to
generate secure random numbers in various languages awhile back. They
did leave out Common Lisp, but it’s easy to do there, too:
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One of the truly wonderful things about programming in Common Lisp is that the system is complete interactive: the programmer can manipulate anything at run time, including the language itself. This is a really powerful technique — but how does one preserve the state of the system between reboots? And how does one get an image-based Lisp system to play nice with Linux’s system service model?
Well, John Wiegley published a great technique a few years ago which I’ve adapted for Tasting Notes.
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One of the truly wonderful things about programming in Common Lisp is that the system is complete interactive: the programmer can manipulate anything at run time, including the language itself. This is a really powerful technique — but how does one preserve the state of the system between reboots? And how does one get an image-based Lisp system to play nice with Linux’s system service model?
Well, John Wiegley published a great technique a few years ago which I’ve adapted for Tasting Notes.
Read more →
Daniel Weinreb — one of the early luminaries of the Common Lisp community — has conducted a survey of Common Lisp implementations. Pretty good stuff; worth reading if you’re a Lispnik.
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Daniel Weinreb — one of the early luminaries of the Common Lisp community — has conducted a survey of Common Lisp implementations. Pretty good stuff; worth reading if you’re a Lispnik.
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A nifty little explanation about why a deeply-layered programming language can save time and money in the long run.
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A nifty little explanation about why a deeply-layered programming language can save time and money in the long run.
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A great blog entry explains why emacs is so incredibly cool.
Imagine an operating system where you can switch from writing code to browsing the web or chatting without leaving a consistent environment, with the same set of commands and shortcuts. Imagine a set of integrated applications where data is seamlessly shared, where any single functionality can be tweaked, extended and adapted to your particular needs. Where everything is easily scriptable.
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A great blog entry explains why emacs is so incredibly cool.
Imagine an operating system where you can switch from writing code to browsing the web or chatting without leaving a consistent environment, with the same set of commands and shortcuts. Imagine a set of integrated applications where data is seamlessly shared, where any single functionality can be tweaked, extended and adapted to your particular needs. Where everything is easily scriptable.
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Many years ago I started to get into Scheme, an academic programming language which was supposed to become the official language of the GNU Project; it was this which drew me to it. After all, if the GNU Project would be using it everywhere, then it’d serve me well to learn it ASAP.
Scheme’s an interesting member of the Lisp family; code is represented as a list which may itself be manipulated.
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Many years ago I started to get into Scheme, an academic programming language which was supposed to become the official language of the GNU Project; it was this which drew me to it. After all, if the GNU Project would be using it everywhere, then it’d serve me well to learn it ASAP.
Scheme’s an interesting member of the Lisp family; code is represented as a list which may itself be manipulated.
Read more →
Years ago in school I was introduced to Lisp; my opinion was not very favourable. It appeared to be a goofy theoretical language, useful for exploring functional programming and maybe for AI work, but not for solving real-world problems. I don’t believe that I’m alone in having gotten that impression; for some reason all too many college CS programmes focus on teaching C and Java.
Be that as it may, I had the sneaking suspicion that Lisp might actually be far more practical than it had appeared.
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