When comparing Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) vs CMUCL, the Slant community recommends Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) for most people. In the question“What are the best Lisp dialects?” Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is ranked 5th while CMUCL is ranked 13th. The most important reason people chose Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is:
Has active contributors, including Google and some quantum computing companies engineers.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Heavily developped
Has active contributors, including Google and some quantum computing companies engineers.
Pro Type inference and type checking
Incorrect type declarations are treated as errors. SBCL can deduce types quite well.
Pro Actively maintained
Bug-fixes, performance improvements, refinements. New ports.
Pro Fast native code compiler
SBCL (and CMUCL)'s compiler, Python, produces optimized native code.
Pro Easy install
Portacle makes it easy to install SBCL, Emacs and SLIME.
Pro Free Open Source Software
Parts of SBCL are licensed under a BSD-Style license. The rest are in the public domain.
Pro Fast execution, faster compilation
CMUCL runs about as fast as SBCL, and they are both among the fastest Common Lisp implementations. CMUCL compiles faster than SBCL, cutting down on development, deployment, installation, and user testing turnaround time.
Pro Stand-alone executables
Pro Copyfree licensed (revised BSD license)
Most of CMUCL is in the public domain, with a few subsytems under permissive license.