Gathering thoughts on a new Common Lisp book

crmsnbleyd

Hello metalisp community!

I've been thinking about writing a modern common lisp book that would act as an introduction to folks who know another language, and would include chapters on many different concerns that seem to not be included in extant books, like CFFI, database integration, Wasm, and so on.

What would you want to see in such a book? What would you not like to see?

amoroso

This is great news and I eagerly look forward to new Lisp books.

I'd like to see more about designing Common Lisp software, especially large systems. I'm also interested in coverage of CLOS such as what kinds of problems it's best suited to and the design of CLOS and Lisp protocols. Design is the common (no pun intended) theme of my wishlist as it's often overlooked by Lisp learning resources. Developing small or medium systems is relatively easy, the challenge is how to scale design to larger systems.

As for what I wouldn't like to see, LLMs and AI-assisted coding.

marcuskammer

Great idea! If you want to get feedback for some content, you could use wiki.metalisp.dev to have some group work. A while ago I did setup a build environment for documentations using emacs, org, and latex https://code.metalisp.dev/marcuskammer/user-centered-development-book In case you need a build environment for your book.

As I am into web development I would like to know how to develop large scale web services in cloud environments. More documentations about containers would be great.

vindarel

Any modern, good-looking, non-trivial book would be welcome.

CFFI, database integration

=> https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/ffi.html & https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/databases.html

The Cookbook is available in EPUB and PDF (the PDF structure is coming to the next level very soon©)

not like to see

premature custom style used throughout the book instead of Vanilla CL.

ggxx

vindarel Over 90% of what I know about CL came from https://lispcookbook.github.io/. Thanks for compiling all that information. The info there is so practical.

amoroso

I second @vindarel's recommendation against premature custom style. The only book I ever requested a refund of was a Common Lisp one where the author defined at the start their own pet binding forms, instead of equivalent let* and others that have been second nature to Lispers since forever, and used those forms throughout the book.

khinsen

Once you move on from "learning Lisp" to "doing things with Lisp", the Cookbook is the most helpful documentation.

amoroso

Another topic I'd like to see more about is CLIM/McCLIM. Although it's easy to get started with CLIM and write small applications, the CLIM specification is large and full of concepts and it may not be clear how the pieces fit together. Also, lots of details are often implicit.