> I see a lot of “coding” talk in the blog and comments from the author here, but few mentions as to what kind of software they’re building or what use cases they’re targeting.
Good point! This is all currently just a hobby. For Common Lisp specifically, the only things I've produced are a (mediocre) Battlesnake client and a (now defunct, as of yesterday) multiplayer word scramble game. Neither of these really derives much benefit from being created in Lisp, but I learned a lot along the way (which was really the point).
Unrelated to Common Lisp, I've found myself often needing to write code that generates code. This is an area where I suspect Lisp will shine, although I haven't had a chance to give it a try yet. Two examples from recent projects (which I tackled before ever thinking about using Common Lisp) are:
* Generating code to validate a particular JSON Schema (used in a static site generator)
* Generating JSX from Markdown (used for story content in a programming game)
To say nothing of the innumerable C macros I've written in my lifetime :)
Thanks for the answer! Your word scramble game in particular seems like something that approximates my “maybe not a good fit for FP” bucket. Do you plan on sharing it on GitHub or describing the challenges you ran into?
Completely agree code generation is where I expect Lisp to perform the best. Though, I looked it up and apparently Markdown is not context-free so.. curious as to the challenges that introduces as I figure FP could zap through parsing a CFG but really struggle with state for something not context free
Good point! This is all currently just a hobby. For Common Lisp specifically, the only things I've produced are a (mediocre) Battlesnake client and a (now defunct, as of yesterday) multiplayer word scramble game. Neither of these really derives much benefit from being created in Lisp, but I learned a lot along the way (which was really the point).
Unrelated to Common Lisp, I've found myself often needing to write code that generates code. This is an area where I suspect Lisp will shine, although I haven't had a chance to give it a try yet. Two examples from recent projects (which I tackled before ever thinking about using Common Lisp) are:
* Generating code to validate a particular JSON Schema (used in a static site generator)
* Generating JSX from Markdown (used for story content in a programming game)
To say nothing of the innumerable C macros I've written in my lifetime :)