This project came about as I started working on a different project which I prototyped in Python but ultimately wanted to develop in Lisp. In the prototype, I used several Python libraries for which I either couldn’t find a Lisp replacement, or the Lisp replacement was terribly unmaintained.
After seeing all the complaints about Lisp’s “library problem”, I decided that this was a deeper problem that I should work on.
I have been a Python coder since 2007, and have been hacking on (Emacs) Lisp since shortly afterwards. Most of the projects I’ve worked have been simply hobbies, so I have tended to favor Python’s libraries/readability over Lisp’s power. This project has made me engage with Python at a really deep level, and has pushed me to write some serious Lisp code.
My LinkedIn profile is my public profile on the web.
This website is hosted as a separate branch (gh-pages) of the GitHub
repo, making it available on github.io (where you are likely reading
it now).
The site itself is built using Jekyll on GitHub servers, which is an awesome workflow. I write in Markdown and have “one-click” publishing by pushing the files to the repo.
The awesome style of the site is provided by Pool. This is the Hyde theme.
The name is a reference to
Dennis the Constitutional Peasant,
from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who says to Arthur, “Supreme
executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some
farcical aquatic ceremony… you can’t expect to wield supreme
executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you.”
That and cl-python and pylisp were already taken.