flib

May 25, 2009 — jao

Update We’ve moved the date of our first meeting to June 17th, so you’re still in time to join us! If you want to follow our adventures, you can also ask for an invitation to our mailing list.

The other day, Andy and I met Jos, an experienced schemer who lives near Barcelona, with the idea of having lunch, talking about Scheme, and create a Scheme Users Group. After a bit of discussion, we agreed on widen the group’s scope, and start what we’re calling Fringe Languages In Barcelona (FLIB). The plan is to conduct periodic meetings with a main presentation followed by some lightning talks (the latter were a complete success at ILC, and we’d like to try and see how they work for us), with as much discussion interleaved as we see fit. We’ll have some refreshments available and, since we’re meeting in the very center of the old city, visits to pubs or a restaurant for dinner and further socializing are to be expected.

As i said, we’re expecting much discussion about Scheme and Lisp, but we’re not ruling out by any means other fine languages. For instance, the talk for the inaugural session (scheduled June 10th17th, 7:30 pm) is entitled The implementation of FUEL, Factor’s Ultimate Emacs Library, and it will include a short introduction to Factor (yes, i am the victim speaker). Jos will come next, the same day, with a lightning talk about PLT Redex. We have free slots for more lighting talks: you are invited not only to come, but to give one if you’re so inclined. This being our first meeting, there will be also some time for logistics and organisation.

So, if you’re near here by then, by all means, come in and join the fun:

Calle del Pi 3 Principal Interior (first floor)
Barcelona

Not really needed, but if you’re thinking about coming, sending me a mail beforehand will help us to be sure that we’ve got enough food and drinks.

We’re looking forward to getting FLIB started, and we’re sure that at least grix more fringers are coming! Don’t miss it!

Posted in Common Lisp, Elisp, Erlang, Haskell, Lisp, Programming, Prolog, Scheme, Smalltalk. 2 Comments »

Geiser

May 14, 2009 — jao

Update: Since a few months ago, Geiser has its own home in the interwebs.

I hope you’ll pardon a shameless plug of one of my latest hacks, Geiser, a new Emacs-Scheme interaction mode.

After having lots of fun implementing Fuel, i was left with a lot of Elisp code that, i realized, could be easily reused for languages other than Factor. I also decided that it was high time to stop whining about Scheme environments not being dynamic enough and do something about it. As they say, talk is cheap.

Thusly, Geiser was born, and today it came of 0.0.1 0.0.2 age, as per the git tag in its repository.

If you know Slime or Fuel, you know what Geiser aims at: a pleasant, live interaction with Scheme without leaving Emacs. This first release is by no means there yet, but you’ll already find some joy using it: module-aware and incremental evaluation, jumping to definitions, dynamic symbol completion and automatic signature display in the echo area are the highlights.

Currently, Geiser supports two Scheme implementations: Guile and PLT. Yeah, i like both (and several others). It’s been really fun discovering how to tweak them to obtain the metadata i wanted, and their developers and users have been helpful, kind and patient to no end. A big thanks to them (you know who you are), and my promise that i’ll keep nagging.

Both Guile and PLT have given me many pleasant surprises. Guile is the most common-lispy Scheme around, and the recent hard work and improvements by the likes of Andy Wingo is making much of the criticism it memetically receives just moot. And PLT is by no means the rigid system i thought it was, while retaining all the great features i knew it had. Try any of them, with or without Geiser: they’re real fun.

Back to Geiser, this being an alpha release, there’s no screencasts or real documentation… the code just escaped leaving a blood trail, you know. Maybe one day it’ll have a webpage, a mailing list and even users. In the meantime, if you’re brave enough, the README will hopefully do; and, of course, the code:

  git clone git://gitorious.org/geiser/mainline.git

(If you’re not brave enough, but curious, the code is browsable here.)

Needless to say, all kinds of comments, criticisms and laundry lists are welcome and, actually, encouraged.

Happy scheming!

Posted in Emacs, Hacks, Scheme. 36 Comments »
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