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nytpu

Theory: is #Emacs being “good enough” why no #Lisp has a fantastically integrated development environment (including GUI toolkit) like every extant Smalltalk implementation has? Because as far as I can tell, Lisp machines *did* have a Smalltalk-like environment, but since Emacs existed nobody bothered to try implementing an equivalently featureful environment after Lisp machines stopped being a thing

28 Mar 2023 at 14:42 | Open on tilde.zone
7 comments
Chip Butty

@nytpu my theory is that for a long time unix has been such an amazing text environment that opens emacs up to being lispy in so many other environments. Smalltalk has always seemed like a very shiny box to be locked into.

28 Mar 2023 at 14:50 | Open on functional.cafe
nytpu

@otfrom Yeah, being able to work with any text is nice. All I want is something like the Smalltalk system browser where I don't need to worry about organizing or navigating files and can sort code however most makes sense, like a full tree of methods, or everything in a package, or whatever.

28 Mar 2023 at 15:17 | Open on tilde.zone
Chip Butty

@nytpu I'm wondering if some of that is coming with some of the modable emacs ideas and things that can be done with tree-sitter in emacs 29. I'd like to have the best of both worlds.

Having strong tools to fall back on with text was really good for working in novel areas.

28 Mar 2023 at 15:21 | Open on functional.cafe
🏴 Lispegistus 🧠➕🖥️

@nytpu
There's LispWorks, which is based on Hemlock, a graphical Emacs written in Common Lisp. It's really expensive though, but if you want to write cross platform GUIs in Lisp, it's your best bet.

28 Mar 2023 at 15:06 | Open on hachyderm.io
arpunk

@nytpu There are a few efforts that trying to get a similar environment within Common Lisp: codeberg.org/mmontone/mold-des and project-mage.org/

28 Mar 2023 at 15:22 | Open on chaos.social
Ethan Blanton

@nytpu That may be part of it, but I think another issue here is that Lisp has never been monolithic like Smalltalk, and the Lisp standard (at least CL) has no GUI toolkit primitives.

28 Mar 2023 at 15:34 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Arne Babenhauserheide

@nytpu yes — and maybe that’s because Emacs is a fantastically integrated development environment including cross-platform GUI toolkit that even works on the terminal …

Also Dr. Racket.

28 Mar 2023 at 16:14 | Open on rollenspiel.social
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