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Add to SafariWhen comparing Common Lisp vs Lobster, the Slant community recommends Common Lisp for most people. In the question“What are the best (productivity-enhancing, well-designed, and concise, rather than just popular or time-tested) programming languages?” Common Lisp is ranked 4th while Lobster is ranked 26th. The most important reason people chose Common Lisp is:
Almost all aspects of the language are designed with interactive/repl use in mind.
Specs
Question 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 Compile time reference counting
Unlike Rust doesn't make the programmer jump through hoops, mainly automatic. Does an analysis similar to the Rust borrow checker to infer lifetimes, but makes life easier on the programmer.
Pro Python-esque syntax
There's an audience who loves that.
Pro WebAssembly backend
More options for users.
Pro Inline structs
Structs are allocated in their parent, and come at zero overhead.
Pro Automatic memory management
Better than Rust. No sadism.
Pro Type inference algorithm
Just works. Goes further than most languages in terms of allowing code without types.
Cons
Con Small community
Lead doesn't appear to be so ambitious or has a vision to push making more popular.
Con Compile time reference counting not 100%
Around 5% of time, need to escape to runtime reference counting. Working to get the percentage as low as possible.
Con Lobster not yet totally written in Lobster
Core written in C++. Plans to change that, but has been a long time.
Con Python-like syntax, but different use case and domain
Not Python compatible and often significantly different in purpose and use cases.
