What's your opinion on clojure? I'm trying to pick the lisp I'd like to learn and clojure with it's java interop is really attractive
I don't see myself ever using Clojure. It's missing too many of the good things from Common Lisp: readtables, imperative constructs (PROG, LOOP, etc.), separate function/variable namespaces. Lispworks and Gambit have better concurrency primitives than Clojure. I've never needed Java interop, interfacing with C libraries is much more important. If I ever go back to doing functional programming it's going to be in Haskell again because it's not worth giving up imperative programming unless you get the combination of static typing and monads in return.
How does it feel to have a front page profile on HN? (Hi vlad! :D)
Hi Sean! Feels good, but not as good as reconnecting with an old friend I've been out of touch with that happened today. It's been a good day.
Which Common Lisp distro do you prefer?
Clozure, mostly because the SBCL compiler is very slow. I'd use CLISP but the backtraces in SLIME are full of junk.
Currently, I develop in Clozure and SBCL alongside, and it's true that SBCL compilation speed (and memory consumption) can be prohibitive at times, but in return it may give up to 3-4 times execution speed increase. So it's a real trade-off worth considering. We now use CCL for interactive development and SBCL on the server.