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If you actually want to develop applications you should probably stick to Common Lisp. SBCL and ClozureCL are extremely high-quality implementations and Common

by PeCaN 10y ago

If you actually want to develop applications you should probably stick to Common Lisp. SBCL and ClozureCL are extremely high-quality implementations and Common Lisp generally has the most libraries. It's probably the worst Lisp from a design standpoint, but the best from a practical one. Racket seems interesting in that regard however. If you want to embed a Lisp in a larger application, Guile is definitely good with an easy API and high-quality implementation.

ianleeclark 10y ago
Embedding Guile does sound interesting, but the problem is I don't have any use-cases. I have looked into SBCL before, so I may check it out. Chicken Lisp seems nice with its packaging system, but at the same time, that's the only experience I've had with it. I'll probably end up going with SBCL; I have seen it recommended many, many times for beginners wanting to use lisp.
- davexunit 10y ago
  Guile programmer here. I highly recommend extending Guile rather than embedding it within another program. For example, the GNU Guix package manager provides a suite of tools, but it's also a collection of Guile modules so that other programs can use it as a library. I know quite a few SBCL users now from the Lisp games community, so if you are enticed by CLOS and such then that also seems like a fine road to travel down. Good luck on your Lisp journey!
- ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
  > Chicken Lisp seems nice with its packaging system, > but at the same time, that's the only experience I've > had with it. I'll probably end up going with SBCL; I > have seen it recommended many, many times for > beginners wanting to use lisp. CHICKEN Scheme (not exactly a lisp as per "Common Lisp") is quite good, even beyond the packaging system. I'd say the language itself has some drawbacks compared to Guile as a Scheme (no delimited continuations, only green threads), but there's a lot to love too (FFI / bind module, renaming macros, wealth of modules, and the community / IRC channel). That said, SBCL isn't bad, but I'm personally doubtful there's much of a difference at the end of the day. Most of the time anything you write in Common Lisp can be more or less translated into Scheme with _very_ little effort, so which LISP you pick hardly matters. All that said, I still use both Guile and CHICKEN myself, and swap between them depending on whatever my use case is. I tend to use more CHICKEN nowadays because the Guile on Windows story is a sad one, but overall there's a lot of fun to be had with either language.
  - outworlder 10y ago
    The FFI is wonderful. Chicken also enables neat hacks. If you grab the generated C code and paste a couple of lines in your app's entry point, you can compile the resulting blob and deploy on iOS, for instance.

by PeCaN 10y ago

ianleeclark 10y ago

Embedding Guile does sound interesting, but the problem is I don't have any use-cases. I have looked into SBCL before, so I may check it out. Chicken Lisp seems nice with its packaging system, but at the same time, that's the only experience I've had with it. I'll probably end up going with SBCL; I have seen it recommended many, many times for beginners wanting to use lisp.

davexunit 10y ago
Guile programmer here. I highly recommend extending Guile rather than embedding it within another program. For example, the GNU Guix package manager provides a suite of tools, but it's also a collection of Guile modules so that other programs can use it as a library. I know quite a few SBCL users now from the Lisp games community, so if you are enticed by CLOS and such then that also seems like a fine road to travel down. Good luck on your Lisp journey!
ThatGeoGuy 10y ago
> Chicken Lisp seems nice with its packaging system, > but at the same time, that's the only experience I've > had with it. I'll probably end up going with SBCL; I > have seen it recommended many, many times for > beginners wanting to use lisp. CHICKEN Scheme (not exactly a lisp as per "Common Lisp") is quite good, even beyond the packaging system. I'd say the language itself has some drawbacks compared to Guile as a Scheme (no delimited continuations, only green threads), but there's a lot to love too (FFI / bind module, renaming macros, wealth of modules, and the community / IRC channel). That said, SBCL isn't bad, but I'm personally doubtful there's much of a difference at the end of the day. Most of the time anything you write in Common Lisp can be more or less translated into Scheme with _very_ little effort, so which LISP you pick hardly matters. All that said, I still use both Guile and CHICKEN myself, and swap between them depending on whatever my use case is. I tend to use more CHICKEN nowadays because the Guile on Windows story is a sad one, but overall there's a lot of fun to be had with either language.
- outworlder 10y ago
  The FFI is wonderful. Chicken also enables neat hacks. If you grab the generated C code and paste a couple of lines in your app's entry point, you can compile the resulting blob and deploy on iOS, for instance.