My summer promise to myself is to get into the lisps and do some new stuff. I've been stuck with C, NASM, Python and JS/PHP for quite some time now and I feel like I should branch out. Clojure seems like a good choice but CL seems to be more recommended across sites I've read.

I realize this might be slightly OT but, yeah.

I started out with Clojure, but recently have been really enjoying Janet.[0]

Janet is a tiny (the entire language, core library, interpreter, assembler, and compiler are all < 1 MB combined), some-batteries-included, embeddable Lisp implemented in C. It borrows a number of Clojure's design sensibilities but isn't married to the JVM. It has super-fast startup times, so it's great for scripting. It has a built-in event loop, so you can do concurrent stuff out of the box. And the accompanying build tool compiles straight to native executables (either statically or dynamically linked) so distribution is a breeze.

If you're Clojure-curious but want something lighter-weight with (IMHO) a much more gradual learning curve, Janet is a great pick.

[0] https://janet-lang.org

I started with CL in December '20 and used it for small toy projects for about 18 months and then, when my last child was born, completely forgot it exists.

Janet looks really interesting. How did you go about learning it?

I learned it mostly just by reading through the official documentation[0], but also by looking at code examples in the test suite of the compiler itself at janet-lang/janet[1], the official contrib library at janet-lang/spork[2], and hanging out in the community chatroom on gitter[3].

Recently, one of the veterans in the community published an online beginner-focused book called "Janet for Mortals" that I wholeheartedly recommend: https://janet.guide

Aside from that, the community and ecosystem around Janet is still very much developing. I don't know of any really good tutorials on YouTube, for example, and while I know of a blog or two there aren't many. So there's totally a niche for someone to create new content, if that's something you're interested in doing.

[0] https://janet-lang.org/docs/index.html

[1] https://github.com/janet-lang/janet

[2] https://github.com/janet-lang/spork

[3] https://gitter.im/janet-language/community