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Comment by AyanamiKaine | Hacker News Reader

I can also recommend clojure. For me it has the best parts of common lisp and the best of the java ecosystem. But its also quite different from common lisp and scheme. Different enough to find some unique ideas.

Writing scripts using [0] Babashka is also really nice.

[0] https://babashka.org/

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As a former Clojure dev (now just using Clojure in my spare time) I love Babashka. Michiel Borkent really nailed it with sci (Small Clojure Interpreter) and Babashka. Running a custom Clojure interpreter in a GraalVM compiled Clojure app is quite clever.

Now there are of course limitations to what you can do in terms of not supporting Java reflection or the full Clojure compiler. But I've made some nifty small scripts and convenience helpers with it. And the dev experience of making these scripts is so much nicer than trying to write bash scripts. The Clojure edn syntax is super simple, and the REPL connected editor let me rapidly test parts of the code just like with full Clojure apps.

I don't have experience with other lisps, but I can vouch for Clojure being very nice. The community was welcoming and friendly to newcomers when I started learning, I hope it still is. One thing I love about the Clojure ecosystem and community is the effort taken to never break libraries. I've looked at libraries I used some ten years ago, and the API is still compatible with code I wrote back then. There is very little churn. Maybe this is because the language is largely untyped and editors only partially check "types". Having breakages in libraries you consume once every couple of months would get really tiring in Clojure land. I'd imagine the same problems would present themselves in Common Lisp and others.

I love the Clojure community, it is the only one that usually talks about the host platform in a symbiotic way, not as if they would be rewriting everything into their favourite language, like in most guest languages communities.

people don't usually think of C as a host platform, but the python community has a similarly symbiotic relationship with C extensions.

Since Java 25/Project Panama, I have that kind of relationship with C from Clojure as well.

Codex can one shot the bindings flawlessly, and the interface is significantly faster for downcalls vs. JNI.

Hence why it is such a sad story with JIT compilers in Python.

I particpated in a Clojure reading group for "Getting Clojure" back around 2017. Having the entire JVM ecosystem available, is absolutely a great benefit. I even fooled around with ClojureScript a bit. David Nolen is great at making the case for both.

On a related note, there's a cross-platform Common Lisp package, "Bike" https://github.com/Lovesan/bike, that lets you use .Net assemblies from Common Lisp.

I've used it a tiny bit at work (on Windows) and at home (on Linux), and ran into one issue with "out" parameters, but otherwise it works really well.

That's just crazy! (in a good way) I've been in software since 1998 and it's like I've just uncovered a whole new world.

What about this one? https://github.com/dotcl/dotcl

> Common Lisp implementation on .NET. Lisp source is compiled to CIL (Common Intermediate Language) and runs on the .NET JIT — so the same Lisp image runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux across x86-64 and ARM64 without per-platform porting work.

Thanks! I don't think I've seen that one.

Now there's Jank too, the first time a Lisp dialect has reached into native world since Clasp. The way it interops Clojure with the LLVM is unprecedented.

> the first time a Lisp dialect has reached into native world since Clasp.

What's that supposed to mean? Many (probably most if we only consider the non-toy ones) lisp implementations are "native" (compiling to native machine code, not interpreted).

You can directly call C++ as C++, not via a C ABI.

> You can directly call C++ as C++, not via a C ABI.

That's a unique definition of "native". It suggests that C is not a native language, which is going to be a hard thing to convince others of.

Ya, I think that was a bit misspoken. They mostly meant direct C and C++ interop. It feels much less like a traditional FFI and more like using C and C++ libraries from C++ itself.

I mean if you're going to be that pedantic, then Clojure is "native" since all Clojure functions "compile to machine code" via the JVM's JIT.

I'm also working on Jolt which uses Chez Scheme as the compiler. https://jolt-lang.github.io

I've already got enough of JVM compatibility to run Ring apps, and have some fun libraries like a Reagent style library on top of GTK https://yogthos.net/posts/2026-07-02-jolt.html

Don't forget Jolt! It's clojure built on top of Chez Scheme, which is super cool.

Babashka is really nice indeed. Am hopeful for the C++ hosted Clojure dialect, Jank (https://jank-lang.org)

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