Common Lisp Stuff

Lately (mid-2008) I've started using Common Lisp for a couple of projects. I'd been using Scheme for a while before that, but seeing the difference between the SQL libraries available for my Scheme and CLSQL kind of put me off it. I still like Scheme better as a language (I don't like Lisp-2 languages at all), but not enough to forgo the vast library code advantage CL has.

So here's some bits about CL, just sort of writing them down as I encounter them in case they're helpful to others, or to me in the future.

• Learning About Weblocks
• Weblocks Tutorial Blog
• CLHS Searcher
• The Series Library is an interesting tool for dealing with iteration over just about anything. It's a bunch of operations on a lazy-list-like data type. If that means anything to you, it's probably worth taking the time to understand this library.
• Heresy is, by contrast, a much better general lazy list tool, at least for my purpsose.
• SPath is my first CL package. It's a DSL for digging through large list structures, like those that get generated by converting XML to s-expressions.
• I'm really into the whole continuation-based webserver thing. The two I've found most intriguing are Weblocks and core-server (although an honorable mention goes to UnCommon Web for being more popular than either and having some great screencasts). I went with Weblocks for reasons I describe at length on the core-server mailing list.

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