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jimbokun • 05/04/2025 • 4 replies • view on HN

Man that seems like an awful lot of ceremony for a trivial web app. Surely the language known for macros and building your own DSLs has a more concise way to get a web app up and running?

Replies

silcoon • 05/04/2025

Author here: You're right! I did that in the article. First I showed how to use the modern libraries, then wrote a quick custom library that compressed my original app in 29 LOC[0].

[0]: It came out shorter than the guestbook demo in Python-Flask.

nomilk • 05/04/2025

This is a pretty great tutorial using common lisp libraries:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4PzSsOD-CQ

(also, the top comment is gold)

➕ show 1 reply
anonzzzies • 05/04/2025

Is it? This translates fairly exactly to things like nodejs/express implementing the same thing?

vindarel • 05/04/2025

yeah the author does too much (and un-necessary stuff). To keep his stack just use the Caveman library has he does:

    (defparameter *web* (make-instance '<app>))

    @route GET "/"
    (defun index ()
      (render #P"index.tmpl"))
https://github.com/fukamachi/caveman/ (I like Mito and Djula, I'd go with Hunchentoot rather than Clack which is famously undocumented)