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Comment by capableweb | Hacker News Reader

Being a Clojure addict, I guess I have to leave the obligatory link to Babashka too then: https://github.com/babashka/babashka (Native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting)

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As a CL addict, this isn't unlike Babashka: fast-starting CL scripting with batteries included. https://github.com/ciel-lang/CIEL (alpha) (otherwise the solution is to build a binary)

As an Emacs addict, Emacs can do it all that babashak & ciel do, plus much more than so, like having a great stepper (edebug) and possibility to view the output while stepping through the code in a separate file buffer, as well as a server for long term processes, that can watch files and directories etc.

I love Clojure as a language but I can't bother to deal with the JVM ecosystem most of the time.

Is this something I could use as an alternative?

My understanding is that the linked lib/system is "clojure without the JVM"

Yes and no. Babashka itself is Clojure/JVM program compiled with graalvm to a native binary that starts very fast. Babashka contains an interpreter for a simplified variant of Clojure. It also contains a predefined set of classes of the JVM and a predefined set of Clojure libraries.

Basically, it contains most of what you would need to use it for simple scripts, make network requests, parse command line arguments and many more things.

But, it won't run every possible Clojure program and it won't be as performant as Clojure on the JVM if the program runs longer.

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