I've signed up for the LinkedIn Hackathon in Toronto, already got an idea for it involving locations and some of the Toronto Open Data set, probably need to do some web scraping or some API data collecting. Going to use Django/Python this time around as that's what I'm familiar with at work and know how it behaves rather than trying to mess around with Common Lisp and whatever tools are available.
As a change of pace I'm using LispWorks Personal Edition in Windows 7 (64-bit). I've already encountered a compilation error in cl-web-utils. It has to do with the helpers file which has some useful macros and functions, however most of them don't seem to be used and I feel like some of them can be inlined or replaced with functions from Alexandria or another library. We'll see what happens with that.
The changes I'm making to oauth2 are mostly improving the examples and documentation and testing it with a few more APIs like Twilio.
completed some sort of application for the hackathon, was screwed over by the Wi-Fi routers. Discovered flaws in oauth2 and cl-web-utils packages. Drakma wasn't bad, needs more examples and a bit more documentation for the major functions.
I've signed up for my first ever hackathon, HackTO. The last time I competed in something programming-related was over 3 years ago when I tried some single round algorithms matches on TopCoder. I also tried some of the puzzles in Google's challenge, whatever it's called. My skills are fairly average sadly.
I bought two good old Common Lisp books, and the first one Lisp (3rd Edition) by Winston and Horn arrived on Friday. It's meant to be an introduction to the Common Lisp programming language but since I know much of the basics, I consider it a fairly good reference. The later half of book contains applications that might be more appropriate for 2nd or 3rd year Computer Science students, such as an implementation of Prolog or the implementation of Blocks World which was also used in SHRDLU one of the first AI planning programs).
I used to program in the Common Lisp programming language a long time ago and a few months ago I bought the book Land of Lisp: Learn to Program in Lisp, One Game at a Time! and it sparked a new interest in the language for me. I was working on a prototype of a web application using Django and Python and I decided, hey why not use Common Lisp? It's been refreshing so far, I'm using quicklisp to install libraries and it's ridiculously simple. I'm also at around 80 lines of code right now for the application but I think that's going to grow to maybe 300-400 lines maximum. The web application is pretty simple really though it was hard to see that while using Django and Python. It felt like I was not designing the views and models properly. It feels like using a list as the default data structure and a few functions is easier than creating a bunch of classes and methods. Maybe that reflects badly on my programming skills but whenever I use Lisp, it feels like it doesn't get in my way.
arrived on Friday. It's meant to be an introduction to the Common Lisp programming language but since I know much of the basics, I consider it a fairly good reference. The later half of book contains applications that might be more appropriate for 2nd or 3rd year Computer Science students, such as an implementation of 
and it sparked a new interest in the language for me. I was working on a prototype of a web application using 
and Python and I decided, hey why not use Common Lisp? It's been refreshing so far, I'm using quicklisp to install libraries and it's ridiculously simple. I'm also at around 80 lines of code right now for the application but I think that's going to grow to maybe 300-400 lines maximum. The web application is pretty simple really though it was hard to see that while using Django and Python. It felt like I was not designing the views and models properly. It feels like using a list as the default data structure and a few functions is easier than creating a bunch of classes and methods. Maybe that reflects badly on my programming skills but whenever I use Lisp, it feels like it doesn't get in my way.
