I’ve never did anything serious with Common Lisp, but my light experience on it was that
- the idea that almost all language constructs are user-implementable with macros is quite impressive (but I don’t buy the argument that “real” macros are only able in s-exprs)
- and the REPL-driven development model was a really beautiful and seamless experience.
But… every time I try to use it on some code, I find too many warts and inconsistencies that I just didn’t want to spend too much effort in making it work. It’s a beautiful language in it’s own ways, but the other parts are too ugly (to me, of course).
I’m fine with it being a lisp or not; I just want a clean language with macros baked in (and becomes the basis of most language features), and with a REPL-driven development model as a first class citizen (with interactive restarts and all).
Unfortunately it seems a pipe dream… so I’m stuck here.
[0]: https://mikelevins.github.io/posts/2020-12-18-repl-driven/
Janet [1] is a clean, modern LISP.
Clojure is also an option, but of course that comes with a heavy JVM burden.
> Janet is a clean, modern LISP.
This does seem cleaner. I have some questions though:
- What about the interactive environment like the one in Common Lisp? It's not enough to only have a "REPL", I think.
- There are so many Lisp dialects. Is this one going to remain obscure?
- What's the library situation?Never used a "real" Lisp REPL, but Conjure[0] seems like it ticks a lot of boxes.
>Is this one going to remain obscure?
There are only a ~dozen mainstream languages. Once you get outside of the popular zeitgeist, you have to appreciate exactly what you are getting. It takes a lot of dedication to become fluent in a language/ecosystem, so it is no surprise that people are reluctant to switch to a novel platform. Clojure is far more likely to ever become mainstream (owing to the huge JVM ecosystem), but even that seems to have only limited industry penetration.