Mastodawn

#TIL that #Scheme and #CommonLisp append function can return non-lists! And no, I'm talking or neither symbol NIL nor throwing errors. See for yourself in your favorite REPL:

(append '() 'a)
;; => A

This (appending empty list to a non-list last argument) is wild historic shit that doesn't really make sense to me. But I'm not sure how I'd behave in this situation either. Error out?

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🎄Sencha Wizard 🧙‍♂️🍵1d ago

for example, and largely inspired by #Diceware, i made this lookup program: https://codeberg.org/senchawizard/diceware-lookup. why #CommonLisp? because i could, that's why!

diceware-lookup

A key, value lookup program when given a two column CSV file.

Codeberg.org

Mehrad

1d ago

This is a nice read by @svw which trues to compare the speed of dot product calculation in Python, R and #CommonLisp.

I was surprised why `sum(a*b)` is slower than looping through the elements and calculate the dor product in base R 🤔.

https://stewart123579.github.io/blog/posts/code/calculating-a-dot-product/#python-vs-dot-r-vs-dot-lisp-timing

#Rstats

Calculating a DOT product

You can get high speed, numerical calculation output without having to resort to bug-prone, highly tuned and optimised, unreadable code.

SVW Thunk'd

screwlisp 1d ago

https://screwlisp.small-web.org/cl-series/intern-everything/
Short article #clseries #lazyEvaluation #efficient #commonLisp #lisp . Just an example of using series to in-place alter a nested list by acting on its scanned fringe, incrementally in a repl.

(defparameter *list* '((a 1 b 2) (3) 4 (((c)))))
*list*
(require :series)
(series::install)
(scan-lists-of-lists-fringe ***)
(#Mformat (series nil) (series "~a") *)
(#Mintern *)
(alter *** *)
(series::install :remove t)
*list*

Oh that's actually the whole thing (- explanation)

Common lisp cl-series macro package recursively intern list fringe as symbols

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Stewart V. Wright 2d ago

@simon_brooke

Agreed. #CommonLisp on Android (#cl_repl) is capable and plenty fast enough on a Pixel 8a running your factorial code. 😎

You can make CL faster than the C/C++ used by NumPy: https://stewart123579.github.io/blog/posts/code/calculating-a-dot-product/#python-vs-dot-r-vs-dot-lisp-timing

@alwayscurious @vashti

screwlisp 2d ago

#lispyGopherClimate with @ramin_hal9001 and Kent Pitman
https://communitymedia.video/w/xnUY9Z6koSooVQUHradmwj archive

@kentpitman 's https://www.nhplace.com/kent/Writing/A-Christmas-Peril.html read by yours truly. https://screwlisp.small-web.org/

@pkw points out when people ask why #commonLisp #software they would know, (US DOE's) #maxima CAS is in openbsd base ports and literally everywhere else.

My Kitten plans viz @aral 's https://kitten.small-web.org/tutorials/layout-components/#markdown-fragment-md fragmented markdown knowledge

#eev #irc on libera - @eduardoochs https://anggtwu.net/2025-badly-behaved.html

conditions?
#lambdaMOO