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Clozure Common Lisp VS Lem

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

Clozure Common Lisp logo Clozure Common Lisp

Clozure CL (often called CCL for short) is a free Common Lisp implementation with a long history.

Lem logo Lem

Cross-platform and highly extensible Commo Lisp editor/IDE.
  • Clozure Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-15
  • Lem Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01

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.

Lem features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Clozure Common Lisp and Lem)
Programming Language
100 100%
0% 0
IDE
47 47%
53% 53
Text Editors
38 38%
62% 62
OOP
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Lem should be more popular than Clozure Common Lisp. It has been mentiond 21 times since March 2021. 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.

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 / about 2 months 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 / almost 3 years ago
View more

Lem mentions (21)

  • I Chose Common Lisp
    >Looks like vim-slime is essential to how you work with CL slime has some issues and I am not convinced lisp and vim are a good pair. Lem is getting pretty good and improving by the day, find it much better to work with than vim when it comes to lisp and vim is my primary editor. https://github.com/lem-project/lem. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • EmacsConf 2024 Notes
    Wondering if the Lem project is “accepted” (or worth a test drive) by the Emacs community. I’m a long time Emacs user, occasionally leaving but always returning. Lately, Lem has my attention. https://github.com/lem-project/lem For those not familiar, Lem is very approximately an Emacs, natively written and extendable in Common Lisp, multiplatform, NCurses & SDL2, etc. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Neomacs: Structural Lisp IDE/browser/computing environment
    I know one guy who uses emacs and when I heard of lem (https://github.com/lem-project/lem) I told him. (Lem is also in CL) He was quite enthusiastic of it, but 2 or 3 things were missing at the time, the first of all you guessed it, it's org-mode, second was magit but he could use lem without it and finally it was a plugin manager (but we agreed it is a lot of... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Emacs-ng: A project to integrate Deno and WebRender into Emacs
    There's also Lem, which has a good vim mode and is scriptable in Common Lisp (since it's built in CL) :D https://github.com/lem-project/lem/ It has: LSP support, a treeview, project-related commands, a directory mode, a POC git mode… with ncurses and SDL2 UIs. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Setting up a fundraiser for multi-threaded Emacs, any thoughts on this?
    Indeed, at this point it's just better to contribute to Lem. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

Kiwi Syslog Server - Kiwi Syslog Server prvides solution to centralize and simplify log message management across network devices and servers.

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

Doom Emacs - Emacs configuration similar to Spacemacs but faster and lighter.

Hy - Hy is a wonderful dialect of Lisp that’s embedded in Python.

Productivity Power Tools - Extension for Visual Studio - A set of extensions to Visual Studio 2012 Professional (and above) which improves developer productivity.