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Chicken VS Clozure Common Lisp

Compare Chicken VS Clozure Common Lisp and see what are their differences

Chicken logo Chicken

A portable and efficient cross-platform Scheme implementation that compiles to C.

Clozure Common Lisp logo Clozure Common Lisp

Clozure CL (often called CCL for short) is a free Common Lisp implementation with a long history.
  • Chicken Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18
  • Clozure Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-15

Chicken features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Chicken Scheme is designed to be simple and easy to understand, making it accessible for new users and those familiar with Scheme.
  • R5RS Compatibility
    Chicken Scheme implements the R5RS standard, which ensures compatibility with other Scheme implementations and a wide range of Scheme programs.
  • Portability
    It is highly portable and runs on various platforms, making it a flexible choice for cross-platform development.
  • Extensive Libraries
    Chicken has a rich repository of user-contributed extensions (eggs), providing a vast set of libraries that extend its functionality.
  • Performance
    Chicken Scheme is designed for high performance, using an optimizing compiler that translates Scheme code into C, which is then compiled to machine code.

Possible disadvantages of Chicken

  • Limited Community
    Compared to more popular languages, Chicken Scheme has a smaller developer community, which may limit resources and support.
  • Egg Management Complexity
    Managing extensions (eggs) can be complex and sometimes introduces dependency issues that can be challenging to resolve.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic usage is straightforward, leveraging advanced features and understanding the compiler's workings can have a steep learning curve.
  • Documentation Variability
    The quality and comprehensiveness of documentation can vary, which might complicate the learning and development process for new users.
  • Niche Use Case
    Being a Scheme implementation, its niche use case might not align well with industries primarily relying on mainstream programming languages.

Clozure Common Lisp features and specs

  • High Performance
    Clozure Common Lisp is known for its high performance, especially in numeric computations and complex applications, due to its efficient compiler and runtime system.
  • Cross-platform Support
    CCL runs on multiple platforms including macOS, Linux, and Windows, facilitating development across different operating systems.
  • Dynamic Typing and Flexibility
    CCL, like other Lisp dialects, offers dynamic typing and flexibility which allows developers to write code that can be easily modified and extended.
  • Interactivity
    CCL provides a powerful interactive development environment with a Read-Eval-Print Loop (REPL), allowing developers to test and debug code on the fly.
  • Compatibility with Common Lisp
    Being a comprehensive implementation of Common Lisp, CCL supports a wide range of Lisp features, making it compatible with existing Common Lisp codebases.
  • Active Community
    CCL has an active community that contributes to its development and support, resulting in a wealth of libraries and resources.

Possible disadvantages of Clozure Common Lisp

  • Limited GUI Libraries
    Clozure Common Lisp's support for graphical user interfaces is limited compared to other platforms, which may require additional effort for developing desktop applications.
  • Smaller User Base
    Compared to more mainstream languages like Python or Java, CCL has a smaller user base, which may result in less community support and fewer third-party libraries.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    As with many Lisp dialects, CCL can have a steep learning curve for developers unfamiliar with Lisp syntax and concepts.
  • Less Documentation
    Although there is documentation available, it may not be as extensive or detailed as that for more widely-used languages, potentially hindering new users.
  • Interoperability Challenges
    While CCL can interoperate with C and other languages, setting this up can be complex and may pose challenges for developers needing seamless integration.

Chicken videos

KFC Nashville Hot Extra Crispy Chicken Review

More videos:

  • Review - KFC's® Nashville Hot Chicken REVIEW!

Clozure Common Lisp videos

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Chicken and Clozure Common Lisp)
Programming Language
46 46%
54% 54
OOP
59 59%
41% 41
IDE
27 27%
73% 73
Generic Programming Language

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Clozure Common Lisp might be a bit more popular than Chicken. We know about 6 links to it since March 2021 and only 6 links to Chicken. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Chicken mentions (6)

  • Scheming About Clojure
    Clojure seems good enough. It is not flawless and somewhat overloaded, but far, far ahead of Javascript, Python, Go, or Rust. Of course, I would always prefer CHICKEN Scheme for any passion project. But in an environment that already runs databases written in Java, the JVM has street cred, and a large community hints at sustainability, Clojure presents itself as well balanced in novelty and stability. All in all,... - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Veryl: A Modern Hardware Description Language
    Of course it does! What else would you call something like chicken scheme [https://call-cc.org/], ats [https://ats-lang.sourceforge.net/], or ghc [https://www.haskell.org/ghc/]? They are not "scripts", they are full-blown compilers that happen to use C as their compilation target, and then leverage C compilers to generate code for a variety of architecures. it's a very sensible way to do things. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • The Rise & Fall of LISP - Too Good For The Rest Of the World
    CHICKEN Scheme \ CHICKEN is a compiler for the Scheme programming language. It produces portable and efficient C and supports the R5RS and R7RS (work in progress) standards, and many extensions. It runs on Linux, OS X, Windows, many Unix flavours... Source: about 2 years ago
  • One Minute: Chicken Scheme
    Website: http://call-cc.org Manual: http://wiki.call-cc.org/manual/index Wiki: http://wiki.call-cc.org/ Repository: https://code.call-cc.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=chicken-core.git;a=summary Standard Libraries: http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/5/Included%20modules Extension Repository: http://eggs.call-cc.org/5/. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Ante: A low-level functional language
    If you’re fine with tracing GC (which depends on the situation, of course), Standard ML is a perfectly boring language (that IIUC predated and inspired Caml) and MLton[1] is a very nice optimizing compiler for it. The language is awkward at times (in particular, the separate sublanguage of modules can be downright unwieldy), and the library has some of the usual blind spots such as nonexistent Unicode support... - Source: Hacker News / almost 3 years ago
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Clozure Common Lisp mentions (6)

  • Graphics Livecoding in Common Lisp
    Unfortunately CCL is Intel only on macOS. (macOS is not on the the main page https://ccl.clozure.com) Otherwise this is the one I would use as it has good Cocoa interoperability. - Source: Hacker News / 29 days ago
  • The IDEs we had 30 years ago and we lost
    The descendant of CCL runs on modern Intel Macs. (It also runs on Linux and Windows but without the IDE.) The modern IDE is quite a bit different from the original. In particular, it no longer has the interface builder. But it's still pretty good. It is now called Clozure Common Lisp (so the acronym is still CCL) and you can find it here: https://ccl.clozure.com/ If you want to run the original that is a bit... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • The Saga of the Closure Compiler, and Why TypeScript Won
    Just for fun there is also Clozure Common Lisp. https://ccl.clozure.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Consuming HTTP endpoint using Common Lisp
    I have decided it is time to have some fun and use Common Lisp to create algorithm representation that deals with parallel execution. For this I decided to use Clozure common lisp, put basic Qucklisp there and load some libraries to do this. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Corman Lisp development environment for MS Windows
    CCL also supports windows: https://ccl.clozure.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Chicken and Clozure Common Lisp, you can also consider the following products

Gambit - Cross-platform chess game.

CMU Common Lisp - CMUCL is a high-performance, free Common Lisp implementation.

Racket Lang - Racket (formerly PLT Scheme) is a modern programming language in the Lisp/Scheme family, suitable...

Steel Bank Common Lisp - Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is a high performance Common Lisp compiler.

Guile - Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system.

CLISP - CLISP is a portable ANSI Common Lisp implementation and development environment by Bruno Haible.