SBCL, vs CLISP question, maybe a bit OT, but ...

[Larry Felton Johnson]

I'm simultaneously trying to improve my common lisp skills, relearn
emacs, and learn SLIME. I've stumbled about a bit trying to install
quicklisp (I'm willing to RTFM in terms of getting it installed, so
that isn't my question, yet). One question I have, though, involves
what implementation of lisp to use. I've always used clisp when I've
worked with CL, just because that was the one most readily visible in
the GNU/Linux world in which I've worked. But I've noticed that sbcl
seems to be the default within quicklisp.

Assuming that I want to develop in emacs, using SLIME and quicklisp,
is there any substantial advantage to using one over the other?

Thanks,
Larry

[Zach Beane]

Larry Felton Johnson <larryfelt...@gmail.com> writes:

> I'm simultaneously trying to improve my common lisp skills, relearn
> emacs, and learn SLIME. I've stumbled about a bit trying to install
> quicklisp (I'm willing to RTFM in terms of getting it installed, so
> that isn't my question, yet). One question I have, though, involves
> what implementation of lisp to use. I've always used clisp when I've
> worked with CL, just because that was the one most readily visible in
> the GNU/Linux world in which I've worked. But I've noticed that sbcl
> seems to be the default within quicklisp.

Quicklisp will work with nearly any Common Lisp. CLISP and SBCL are
supported equally well by the Quicklisp software.

The projects distributed by Quicklisp are generally better-tested on
SBCL, because many more people use SBCL than CLISP. That includes the
population of library authors.

> Assuming that I want to develop in emacs, using SLIME and quicklisp,
> is there any substantial advantage to using one over the other?

CLISP is a great system and I'm glad it's available, but I prefer SBCL
for a few reasons.

SBCL is better-supported by SLIME. SBCL compiles to fast native code,
which is important to me, because I use to generate graphics and run
reports on huge files and things like that. SBCL has native thread
support. SBCL has a large user base and has several active
developers. SBCL has frequent releases.

Zach

[Larry Johnson]

On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 3:09 PM, Zach Beane <xa...@xach.com> wrote:

The projects distributed by Quicklisp are generally better-tested on
SBCL, because many more people use SBCL than CLISP. That includes the
population of library authors.

 

Thanks, Zach.  This is a good reason for me to go with sbcl while I'm experimenting.

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