Lisp Examples Frustration

Before I say anything else I have to say that I love LISP and I find the community really help full. I appreciate all the hard work that people put into open source lisp applications that they put out there. I know, I tried it and just never could pull of spending that amount of time on a give back to the community.

So what is my frustration you might ask. Well its the lack of simple yet comprehensive front to back examples by the authors of software. There is no one better to give a simple example than the creator of a piece of software. That person knows what their software can do and what it should not do instinctively. A well though out example can be like a picture, worth a thousand words. A few word with the example would not go amiss either 😉

Such an example is an invaluable tool for the user of the software. Users are just that users. Users don’t want to wade through source code or copious but terse documentation to figure out what is what. Users don’t always have the time or the skill to figure it out on their own but they are still potential users, even potentially loyal users.

Yes the community will eventually come round and do the simple front to back example article, even a couple of them, but I will put money on it that they will pass on some misconceptions via there coding style or their depth of understanding of the subject matter. Those misconceptions or bad practices can cost the new user valuable time and hair.

Please guys don’t skimp on those examples, if nothing else it will cut down on all those “how do I do x?” questions in mailing lists etc.

Tags: Lisp, Lisp Examples