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vydd
sketch
Common Lisp2016–2025
vydd / sketch

sketch

A Common Lisp framework for the creation of electronic art, visual design, game prototyping, game making, computer graphics, exploration of human-computer interaction, and more.

7Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A Common Lisp framework for the creation of electronic art, visual design, game prototyping, game making, computer graphics, exploration of human-computer interaction, and more.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

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Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year8 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-03-20 21:25:29 UTC to 2025-08-23 12:35:55 UTC.

012342016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 2 submissions, 2 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC422
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

8 sources
Alright, here's my little selection of projects. If you don't see a project in your field it doesn't mean there is no software or library. Are they as awesome as the Rust/Go projects? It depends. Is it an exhaustive list? No. For a list of companies using CL and more projects, old or current, see the other links. ## Music - [OpusModus](http://opusmodus.com/) - a comprehensive computer-aided environment for the whole work of music composition. [Proprietary]. - [OM7](https://github.com/openmusic-project/om7) - a new implementation of the OpenMusic visual programming and computer-aided composition environment including a number of improvements on graphical interface, computational mode, and connection to external software libraries. [GPL3][2]. - [ScoreCloud](https://scorecloud.com/) - A web and mobile application to automatically create musi
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c notation from music performance or recordings. Built with LispWorks. ## DB tools - [Pgloader](https://github.com/dimitri/pgloader/) - Migrate to PostgreSQL in a single command!. [PostgreSQL License] - [Pgchart](https://github.com/dimitri/pgcharts) - A self-contained web application that takes as input an SQL query text and outputs its data as a chart. [No License Specified] ## Utils - [Cepl](https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl) - Code Evaluate Play Loop. [2-clause BSD]. - [Regex-coach](http://weitz.de/regex-coach/) - a graphical application for Windows which can be used to experiment with (Perl-compatible) regular expressions interactively. Freeware. ## Text editors - [Lem](https://github.com/cxxxr/lem) - Common Lisp editor/IDE with high expansibility. [MIT]. Works for many languages, has a LSP client. ## Math - [Maxima](https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/files/) - Computer Algebra System written in Common Lisp. [GPL2]. - https://github.com/susam/mathb A math pastebin ## Graphics - [Sketch](https://github.com/vydd/sketch) -A Common Lisp framework for the creation of electronic art, visual design, game prototyping, game making, computer graphics, exploration of human-computer interaction, and more. ## Productivity - [Grammarly](https://www.grammarly.com/) - Grammar checking. [Proprietary]. - [Deftask](https://deftask.com/) - Painless task management for teams. [Partly Open Source]. - [Ichiran](https://github.com/tshatrov/ichiran) - Linguistic tools for texts in Japanese language. [MIT]. - [Ballish](https://gitlab.com/ralt/ballish - a pretty fast code search tool. ### Window Manager - [Stumpwm](https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm) - The Stump Window Manager. ## Mobile Applications - [ScoreCloud Express](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scorecloud-express/id566535238) - An iPhone and iPad application that automatically creates music notation from music performance or recordings. ### Games Just 2: - Kandria https://kandria.com/ - [sucle](https://github.com/terminal625/sucle) - A Minecraft clone (voxel game engine). [MIT]. - [Notalone](https://github.com/borodust/notalone) - You wake up nowhere in the night. Hungry zombies around, but your ol' pal "BOOMSTICK" is with you. [GPL3] My selection comes from https://github.com/azzamsa/awesome-cl-software
In Why Lisp?

Ask HN: My experience with Common Lisp. Is there a better way?

I'm posting my experience hoping someone will tell me I'm doing it wrong and tell me a better way. I'm aware that I could use Racket or Clojure but I really wanted to try Common Lisp as a historically important language. 2 days ago I posted a link that looked really interesting as a fun way to learn Common Lisp. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29856110 or Sketch https://github.com/vydd/sketch Turns out it was previously posted and got good feedback so I decided to try it. I use Windows. There were several Common Lisp installations to choose from. I choose Clozure because it appeared to be developed by Mac users, so I thought it might to have features I liked. Clozure installation on Windows was fine. However, I ran into problems installing sketch because I had to build Simple Direct Media components https://www.libsdl.org/ and it
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wasn't clear ahead of time which ones. I didn't have MinGW, MSYS2 or Cygwin setup so instead I rooted around until I found SDL2.dll and libtiff.dll. Unfortunately, I couldn't find libffi.dll so had to build it. I installed MSYS2 but failed. Cygwin same thing. This is my fault as I never learned how to do this. I installed Steel Bank Common Lisp without problem hoping it might have what Sketch needs but it doesn't I gave up on Windows proper and installed WSL2 because I'm on a developers preview of Windows 11 and had read that it does graphics now. I installed Ubuntu 20 into it, but couldn't get it to work. I had the same problem building SDL. I switched to my VMWare installation of Ubuntu 20 and failed there too, but I suspected there might be a conflict, so I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 20 in a new virtual machine. It worked! Very nice. I can do graphics with Common Lisp. I prefer not using VMWare so I am currently learning the difference between MSYS2, MinGW, Cygwin, and GnuMake32. I expect to have a Windows version working by the end of the day. I wondering if I should do a Docker image or maybe there is something better now? Last time I used Docker it seemed more difficult than it need to be. // These are the steps I took to make it work on Ubuntu. I don't use Linux that often so I'm sure there is a better way like combining some of these commands // Install dev tools sudo apt-get update -y sudo apt install build-essential -y sudo apt-get install -y m4 sudo apt-get install -y git sudo apt-get install -y libsdl2-dev sudo apt-get install -y libsdl2-image-dev sudo apt-get install -y libsdl2-ttf-dev sudo apt-get install -y curl // install Clozure git clone https://github.com/Clozure/ccl.git ccl-dev curl -L -O https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/releases/download/v1.12.1/linu xx86.tar.gz cd ccl-dev tar xf ../linuxx86.tar.gz sudo cp ./scripts/ccl64 /usr/local/bin cd /usr/local/bin sudo chmod +rwx ccl64 sudo chown mike ccl64 sudo chgrp mike ccl64 sudo mv ccl64 ccl code . // start vscode put path to home ccl in var CCL_DEFAULT_DIRECTORY=/home/mike/ccl-dev cd ~/ccl-dev ccl to start REPL (rebuild-ccl :full t) (quit) // install quicklisp into ccl-dev curl -O https://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp ccl --load quicklisp.lisp (quicklisp-quickstart:install) (ql:add-to-init-file) (quit) // start sketch cd to ccl-dev directory type 'ccl' to start Clozure REPL (load "quicklisp.lisp") (ql:quickload :sketch) (ql:quickload :sketch-examples) (make-instance 'sketch-examples:hello-world) (make-instance 'sketch-examples:sinewave) (make-instance 'sketch-examples:brownian) (make-instance 'sketch-examples:life)
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