My first intersection (at least as far as I remember) with the field of programming occurred when I was about five or six, when my elder cousin from Mangalia masterfully drew the Chicago Bulls logo in Basic, on a Romanian ZX Spectrum clone. Then he would simply write the code down on a piece of paper to reproduce it later, since at least at the time, blank cassette tapes weren't that easy to find.

Meanwhile my cousin became a medic himself, which perhaps goes to show yet again that this so-called "job of programmer" (or hacker, or call it whatever you like) is a stupid conceit. One is no more a programmer than he is a cook or a plumber, one's gotta know how to do a bit of everything in this life, as my grandmother used to say.

I'm not sure there ever was a (Common) Lisp community out there, and if there was I missed it.

I suppose not in this Millennium there is, anyway. Part of what attracted me towards Lisp was the image of the solitary Lisp hacker, neither bound to others nor wanting them. Embrace it instead.

Sure, maybe bonding over a programming language is silly, but as the Dan Corlan example shows, some Lispers tend to have plurivalent interests, which makes them quite interesting folks to have around. I know this also sounded a bit silly, but I once met a guy who was using Common Lisp to process data on his astronomical observations over in the dark Romanian plains...

I'm not particularly interested in proselytising these days, but the lisp category on my blog has code ranging from good to awful, so I guess the interested have material to dig into. But rather than poke at my toys, I believe one'd be better introduced into this world by taking a look at the various lists of software that made it, I believe some of it is also publicly available.

I used to be quite active there 15 years back or so. Then my attention was drawn to other interests and it seems with time the site and community have fallen on hard times, particularly after van der Heide retired. Tbh I actively avoid visiting it precisely because I dread being forced to confront the reality of decay. Like not wanting to rip off a bandaid for fear of seeing the festering, purulent wound beneath. Ahem. Well anyway, I know for a fact the Spectrum community is still quite active out there, it's just that they've moved on to other sites, possibly Zuccbook or some other hidey-holes. Perhaps the same is true for Lisp?

I think your mentioning "making friends in the process" gets closer to the heart of the matter - that is one goal where geographical proximity would be most relevant. Personally I'm a bit queasy about the idea of bonding with others over a programming language - over the years I've begun to believe software is one of those things one should maintain a hygienic emotional distance towards. But then again, friendship is just as inherently irrational as love, so maybe the specific things we bond over are just pretexts to allow the magic to happen anyway.

Do you think you might have the energy/time to more prominently showcase your case for Common Lisp on this site? Small projects, maybe even games, concrete code. Would do wonders for honeypotting the potentially interested, methinks.

I did find it eventually, but only because you mentioned it. :) And I also found your old Z80 opcode guide in the process, I wonder why Google didn't place *that* on the front page.

Also, I looked at the World of Spectrum forums for a bit and the atmosphere looks eerily similar to what I'm seeing on the Lisp Discord (yes, there is one and I tried it out): a few hot threads regarding the news du jour, some low-traffic topics, but otherwise mostly ded. Are you still active there?

> Why would one be interested in Lisp afficionados in Romania specifically?

Assessing if (and if, how) this particular language/set of languages are used in this geographical area and perhaps making new friends in the process. I'm particularly interested in Common Lisp and particularly disinterested in Clojure and the other fashionable Lisp dialects. I wouldn't mind stumbling upon some fierce Schemers though.

Otherwise, I was thinking that in a sense, your question is more interesting than the answer. Why would one be interested in Lisp afficionados in Romania specifically?

> I'd bet you're likely to find 100 times more results for Romanians still programming in ZX Basic than in Lisp

I googled this out of curiosity and I found no more than three useful results:

- OLX posts: I've been following these for a while, some years ago people were selling HCs for a thousand euros, I kid you not;
- this guy, already knew him; and
- a site with links to ICE Felix specs in pdf format, hosted on Google Drive. Worth scraping, but otherwise not worth linking publicly.