What does your Lisp workflow look like?
- by Duncan Bayne
I'm learning Lisp at the moment, coming from a language progression that is Locomotive BASIC - Z80 Assembler - Pascal - C - Perl - C# - Ruby. My approach is to simultaneously:
write a simple web-scraper using SBCL, QuickLisp, closure-html, and drakma
watch the SICP lectures
I think this is working well; I'm developing good 'Lisp goggles', in that I can now read Lisp reasonably easily. I'm also getting a feel for how the Lisp ecosystem works, e.g. Quicklisp for dependencies.
What I'm really missing, though, is a sense of how a seasoned Lisper actually works.
When I'm coding for .NET, I have Visual Studio set up with ReSharper and VisualSVN. I write tests, I implement, I refactor, I commit. Then when I'm done enough of that to complete a story, I write some AUATs. Then I kick off a Release build on TeamCity to push the new functionality out to the customer for testing & hopefully approval. If it's an app that needs an installer, I use either WiX or InnoSetup, obviously building the installer through the CI system.
So, my question is: as an experienced Lisper, what does your workflow look like? Do you work mostly in the REPL, or in the editor? How do you do unit tests? Continuous integration? Packaging & deployment? When you sit down at your desk, steaming mug of coffee to one side and a framed photo of John McCarthy to the other, what is it that you do?
Currently, I feel like I am getting to grips with Lisp coding, but not Lisp development ...
