Hi, it’s Vincent. I write about my Common Lisp journey here. I started the blog when I was discovering the language and the ecosystem, wishing more people wrote about CL. Because Common Lisp is was the most hidden world I know.

I now wrote tools, libraries and software, I run a web app in production©, and I am creating videos on Youtube and a Common Lisp course on Udemy

I write intensively about Common Lisp on collaborative resources. My hidden plan is to make Common Lisp popular again. For this, I contribute to the Common Lisp Cookbook (I am the main contributor, by far). I wrote about: CLOS, data structures, building executables, scripting, web scraping, debugging, error handling, testing, databases, GUI programming, web development, the LispWorks IDE etc, and I added a theme, a sidebar and syntax highlighting. I also take time to maintain the awesome-cl list, an important resource in my eyes. I dig up, reference and sort Common Lisp libraries (and I still discover hidden gems three five years after). I do community stuff for Lisp Advocates (not the creator).

But I still want Common Lisp to be easier to learn. So I am creating this Lisp course in videos:

🎥 Common Lisp programming: from novice to effective programmer (on GitHub)

I truly think it is the most effective way to learn CL! I sum up in 5-15 minutes videos what took me a long time to learn or simply discover (a longer time to admit).

So now a newcomer has far more practical information for getting started than a few years ago. But there’s still a lot to do. Besides purchasing or sharing my course, you can thank and encourage me by donations on the following platforms. As I currently don’t have a fixed (nor big) income, that helps. Thanks!


I also write and maintain tools, libraries, software and project skeletons. Among others:

libraries:

  • cl-str, that fixed my first frustration with CL
  • CIEL - a fast startup scripting environment for Common Lisp, with batteries included. Usable, still in development.

and also:

software:

tools:

  • colisper, an interface to Comby, for syntactic code checking and refactoring of Lisp code.
  • indent-tools (emacs package)
  • print-licences
  • a simple tool to fetch the status of your Gitlab pipelines: pipelines-viewer (just a demo on how to access third-party APIs and how to build a binary, really)
  • format-colors, a set of simple format directives to print colored text

project skeletons and demos:

and others:

I contribute to awesome projects such as:

  • Weblocks, an isomorphic web framework. I helped write the quickstart, fixed HTML generation in tables, wrote more documentation, raised issues.
  • the Nyxt browser: I was part of the team in 2019, I am the second contributor of that year.

and I fix bugs when I see them (Mito (my contributions!), Djula…).

You can reach me by email at vindarel, mailz dot org. I am /u/(reverse (str:concat “vince” “zd”)) on reddit.

This website’s sources are on Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/lisp-journey/lisp-journey.gitlab.io/issues