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Hy VS GNU Common Lisp

Compare Hy VS GNU Common Lisp and see what are their differences

Hy logo Hy

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

GNU Common Lisp logo GNU Common Lisp

GCL is the official Common Lisp for the GNU project.
  • Hy Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-30
  • GNU Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-03-22

Hy features and specs

  • Python Interoperability
    Hy seamlessly integrates with Python, allowing you to use the entire Python ecosystem while writing your code in a Lisp-like syntax. This interoperability makes it easier for developers familiar with Python to experiment with Lisp's syntax and ideas.
  • Lisp Syntax and Macros
    Hy provides Lisp's powerful macro system and syntax, enabling more expressive and concise code. The ability to create macros can lead to highly customizable and domain-specific solutions.
  • Readability
    For those familiar with Lisp, Hy offers increased readability due to its minimal syntax and symbolic expressions. This can lead to more straightforward reasoning about the code and reduced syntactic noise.
  • Compiles to Python
    Hy code is compiled to Python bytecode, allowing it to run on any environment where Python is available. This ensures good performance and compatibility with existing Python tools and utilities.

Possible disadvantages of Hy

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For developers not familiar with Lisp, Hy's syntax and concepts (like macros) can be difficult to grasp initially. This can slow down development time as developers need to learn new paradigms.
  • Limited Adoption
    Hy is not as widely adopted or supported as some other languages or even other Lisp implementations. This can lead to less community support, fewer third-party libraries written specifically for Hy, and potentially more difficulty finding solutions to problems.
  • Debugging Complexity
    Debugging in Hy can sometimes be more challenging because errors may occur in the compiled Python code rather than the original Hy code, which can complicate traceback and error understanding.
  • Macro Overuse
    While macros are a powerful feature, their misuse can lead to code that is hard to read and maintain. This can become a con if developers do not exercise restraint and best practices in their use.
  • Performance Overhead
    While Hy compiles to Python, the added layer of abstraction and translation may introduce small performance overheads compared to writing natively in Python, especially for performance-critical applications.

GNU Common Lisp features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Hy videos

HY-IMPACT muscle massager review (incredible)

More videos:

  • Review - Cleveland Launcher XL Hy-Wood Review
  • Review - HY Extracts (Jack Herer) Review

GNU Common Lisp videos

No GNU Common Lisp videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Hy and GNU Common Lisp)
Programming Language
81 81%
19% 19
OOP
85 85%
15% 15
Text Editors
0 0%
100% 100
IDE
73 73%
27% 27

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Hy seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 9 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.

Hy mentions (9)

  • Python's “Disappointing” Superpowers
    Hy: https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/ I tend to stick to vanilla python though, mainly because Hy is too much of an hassle for my use cases. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Why Lisp?
    Q: is there any game dev happening in Lisp? A: https://kandria.com/ and https://itch.io/jam/lisp-game-jam-2022 Q: how do I write a website with Lisp? A: https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/web.html#easy-routes-hunchentoot and https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Web-Examples.html Q: do I have to use emacs for developing Lisp? A: No, https://github.com/vlime/vlime and... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • How trying new programming languages helped me grow as a software engineer
    I really like Hy because it's fully inter-operable with Python. But its documentation is insufficient for anything moderately complex, and its tooling support is pretty basic. If Hy were well documented and supported I'd use it for all my throwaway scripts and prototyping -- today I use Python for that. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Every programmer ever.
    You're looking for https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Val on Programming: What makes a good REPL?
    I've been using the Hy REPL[0] whenever I've wanted to drop into a python REPL. The lack of whitespace formatting with Hy is great, but it still has access to all of python's libraries. [0] - https://docs.hylang.org/en/stable/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
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GNU Common Lisp mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of GNU Common Lisp yet. Tracking of GNU Common Lisp recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Hy and GNU Common Lisp, you can also consider the following products

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

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

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...

Armed Bear Common Lisp - Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL) is a full implementation of the Common Lisp language featuring both...

Clojure - Clojure is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming.