Re: LISP for web

On Wed, 08 Jun 2005 19:29:09 +0000, drewc wrote:

> Damir wrote:
> > Hello!
> >
> > I'm seeing more and more people are choosing lisp as vehicle for their
> > next web project.
> >
>
> I've been using CL (UCW+clsql) for all my web dev over the last year.

Yes, so have I. All in all it was a rather pleasant journey so far.

> Have a good look at UncommonWeb, and you'll see that we do things in
> Lisp that you cannot do (without greenspunning) in any other language.

UnCommonWeb is quite nice (i'm using parts of it for my stuff) but you
should give credit to its parents: the idea of continuation based web
frameworks is rather old in Scheme circles (IIRC Quenec was one of the
early proponents). In discussing cont. based frameworks i think it's fair
to distinguish between Scheme (with its full call/cc support) and Lisp.
The framework that kind of triggered the big interest in cont. based web
programming was most likely SeaSide - a Smalltalk framework (and the
article "Walking on the Seaside"). Following UCW's development one
sometimes sees the _limits_ of CL. Marco's framework "fakes" true
continuations with clever code walkers the rewrite the application code
into CPS style code. This is fun when it works but can result in sometimes
unexpected results. I guess a Schemer might be tempted to say that any
decent cont. based web framework will end up with a bad implementation of
call/cc :-)

> >
> > Features like libraries, persistent SQL and sessions comes to mind.
> > Can (free) lisp environment scale up with let's say RubyOnRails or
> > Erlang...
>
> I've never used Erlang or RoR (though keep your eyes peeled for
> LISP-ON-LINES, which i am in the proccess of releasing) but from my own
> experience, Common Lisp is more than able to withstand a slashdotting.
> (a web site i run, http://lisp.tech.coop, received over 100,000 hits in
> a day, and i didn't even notice a slowdown).

Yes, but i wouldn't consider this high load.

> CLSQL has the best O/R mapping i've ever used. Sessions? whats that
> about? how about Continuations instead... embrace the back button, learn
> to love the "open in new tab" :)

Sometimes these things are just what you want, sometimes they introduce
a strange semantic.

> http://lisp.tech.coop/Web%20Programming has a good outline of the
> available technologies, and i really recommend:
>
> http://lisp.tech.coop/Web%2FContinuation as well.

Those pages are a good collection of the current tools, thank's for
putting them together.

Cheers, Ralf Mattes
> (shameless-plug
> "If you are looking for a webhosting company to host your application,
> and you want full lisp support and great technical support as well, have
> a look at http://tech.coop. We'll not only host your stuff, but we help
> you design and maintain it as well, and answer all your questions like
> 'how can i connect slime to my running application' and 'how can i serve
> images if i'm using araneida'. I'm not aware of any other host that
> offers what we do in the lisp space, and certainly not on a
> not-for-profit basis.")

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