I’ve been learning more about Emacs, and I’ve decided to do AOC 2022 using Elisp to help me learn how to extend it.
Day 1 took about two days to actually complete! It was rough, since I’m not used to the functional paradigm at all, but I was able to get the hang of it after some serious thinking through of the problems. Part 2 of the challenge progressed much more quickly after having had written a full Elisp program.
Day 2 went much faster than Day 1. I didn’t need to make any references to the Elisp manual this time, whereas with Day 1, it was a mainstay in a split buffer. It only took me one day, but I’m still behind. Hopefully in the next couple days I’ll get a chance to catch up!
If there is such a thing as “Paranthesis Hell” in Lisp derivatives, I think I’ve discovered it. Or perhaps just a glimpse into it. Line 95 of my program has 10 parentheses in a row! I wonder if there was a better way to write it. I also had some trouble managing all those parentheses. I had multiple “unexpected end of file” or the like when trying to run it. And Emacs didn’t have any useful way of letting me know which ones were wrong! I thought Flymake was supposed to help catch things like that, but it’s possible I don’t have it configured properly. Or maybe I need to enable LSP through eglot? Further research is required…