Lisp in Vim (2019)

This 2019 deep dive into writing Lisp inside Vim — a famously keyboard-driven text editor — was meant to compare two old-school helper tools, Slimv and Vlime, and show just how far things had come from the bad old days when using Lisp in Vim felt like a lonely side quest. The article is earnest, detailed, and very much about progress: better editing, built-in live coding, debugging, and fewer tears over endless parentheses. In plain English, it argues that Vim users finally had real options for working comfortably with a language many people see as brilliant, weird, and a little mystical.

But the comment section immediately turned into a time-jump roast. Instead of re-fighting Slimv versus Vlime, readers swerved hard into "that was then, this is now" territory. One commenter showed up waving the flag for Fennel, saying using it to configure Neovim has been "really nice" — with the classic catch that the setup is also "a bit annoying," which is basically programmer romance language for it hurts because I care. Then came the hotter take: Conjure is the best way to write a Lisp-like language in modern Neovim, full stop. That turned the vibe from history lesson into soft reboot drama, with the community gently implying the real battle is no longer Slimv vs. Vlime, but legacy tools vs. the shiny new generation. The humor here is deliciously nerdy: even in a discussion about making coding easier, everyone still bonds over one eternal truth — the setup will absolutely test your patience first.