When comparing Common Lisp vs TouchDevelop, the Slant community recommends Common Lisp for most people. In the question“What is the best programming language to learn first?” Common Lisp is ranked 19th while TouchDevelop is ranked 54th. The most important reason people chose Common Lisp is:
Almost all aspects of the language are designed with interactive/repl use in mind.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Carefully designed for interactive use
Almost all aspects of the language are designed with interactive/repl use in mind.
Pro Very Powerful REPL with SLIME
SLIME (Superior Lisp Interaction Mode for Emacs).
Pro Condition/restart system
It is easy to recover from errors. Error resolution can be determined by the user at the REPL.
Pro Image based runtime
The state of the program may be saved and reloaded as an image, supporting safer modification of the running program. New code may be compiled into the image as the program runs, while late binding ensures that symbol redefinitions take effect throughout the program.
Pro Almost as fast as, or faster than, C
Some compilers such as SBCL can be faster than C or other low-level languages, and most compilers can generate fast native code.
Pro Advanced editor
- Browser based that is semi-structured as well as touchscreen friendly with a configurable presentation.
Pro Powerful APIs
APIs exist for persistent and shared data as well as for game engines and accelerometer, geolocation etc.
Cons
Con No collection literals
Collections can be initialized only verbosely.
Con No union types
There are no ADTs, not even enums.
Con No advanced expressions
There is no conditional expression or pattern matching.
