Published 2025-10-15
tag(s): #smallweb #programming
I mentioned in my last post that now that I have this site running on a VPS, I also have a
playground for other things.
For a while I wanted to have my own private Pastebin-like service, and I figured I could learn
some new Common Lisp stuff if I built my own. So
I did that this past weekend.
Initially I thought I should keep it private, out of concern that it could be abused or broken
if exposed (since of course it doesn't have any security measures 👀), but from the
moment the site was up, I shared it with a friend.
And then in next few hours, with more people, in semi-public forums. I couldn't help it.
Once I polished the tool a bit[1], and published that version, I had a
feeling of euphoria.
I felt that before, when I wrapped up the initial version of open source tools and libraries,
but also when getting a PR ready at work for something that makes me feel proud.
The joy of creation. Of seeing something you imagined, typed in, tested, changed and
re-tested, finally reach a stable state and being usable. Even if it is something as small as
this CL website. I had to learn a lot
about Hunchentoot, setting up nginx to
reverse proxy. Try alternatives until things worked more or less the way I envisioned.
And seeing it all come together and "work", it is awesome.
When I settled on using easy-routes, I
kept reading the somewhat sparse documentation and timidly trying things.
Then I remembered that CL is all about interactive development!!!
So, with the web server running, I keep re-defining routes and hitting the server with curl
and eventually the browser, making adjustments.
It was awesome. No compilation step, no restarting, no conflicts. Redefine one or several routes at time, change parameter names. Extract things from the route to external functions, try again on the fly. It was almost magical.
Few people cared about this thing, and I knew that from the beginning. There are a gazillion
Pastebin clones[2], there's zero novelty.
But I had to tell someone about it.
Because I was just happy. Still am. It is a thing I made! And it is live! I
saved a paste from work yesterday and I was like "yes! it still works!"
I figure this is how people who are good playing music, or building things out of wood, or painting, etc. feel. But software is my thing. Maybe the only thing. 😅
Since the morning after I wrapped up Hoagiebin I've been itching to build something else in the Colibrà repo.
I was never much of an ideas person though, so I haven't quite figure out what. For example,
all of my Emacs packages are the result of "I find this or that annoying, I need to a tool
to make it easier." Zero inspiration.
The tricky part is not trying to do something too ambitious. Like, I don't use Fastmail's
WebDAV storage as much anymore (since I moved the site), but it is convenient to have it. So I
thought "well, I can write my own WebDAV server". But once I think a bit more about
it, it can get quite complex...
I can also let things be until I come up with something organically, I guess. But I am
overjoyed now, not later!
Web all the things! Common Lisp all the things! 🙌
(Or, you know, I could finally wrap that dict server...I know it isn't related to my newfound
web superpowers, but...)
PS: I just closed the post, and when picking the tags, I noticed that I have one for "failures" but not one for "successes". It says a lot about me, I think? Fodder for another post LOL.