Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

On Lisp VS Steel Bank Common Lisp

Compare On Lisp VS Steel Bank Common Lisp and see what are their differences

On Lisp logo On Lisp

Learning Resources

Steel Bank Common Lisp logo Steel Bank Common Lisp

Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is a high performance Common Lisp compiler.
  • On Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-12-25
  • Steel Bank Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-24

On Lisp features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Steel Bank Common Lisp features and specs

  • Performance
    Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) is known for its high-performance execution due to its native code compiler, which optimizes and speeds up Lisp code execution significantly.
  • Standards Compliance
    SBCL is largely standard-compliant with Common Lisp, ensuring that code written for SBCL is portable across other Common Lisp implementations.
  • Actively Maintained
    The project is actively maintained and updated, which means it benefits from regular improvements, bug fixes, and up-to-date features.
  • Robust Debugging Tools
    SBCL offers robust debugging tools and a powerful REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop), which aid developers in interactive programming and troubleshooting.
  • Free and Open Source
    SBCL is open-source and available for free, which allows developers to use, modify, and distribute the software under the terms of the license.

Possible disadvantages of Steel Bank Common Lisp

  • Steep Learning Curve
    For beginners, especially those unfamiliar with Lisp or functional programming paradigms, learning SBCL can be challenging.
  • Platform Dependency
    While SBCL is available on multiple platforms, certain features and optimizations are specific to particular operating systems, which can affect portability.
  • Limited Built-in Libraries
    SBCL does not come with a broad range of built-in libraries compared to some other modern languages, which may require additional effort for library management.
  • Verbose Syntax
    Common Lisp, and by extension SBCL, is known for its verbose syntax, which can be cumbersome compared to newer, more concise programming languages.
  • Community Size
    The SBCL community, while active, is smaller compared to those of other mainstream programming languages, potentially limiting the availability of resources and community support.

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to On Lisp and Steel Bank Common Lisp)
Education
100 100%
0% 0
Programming Language
13 13%
87% 87
OOP
16 16%
84% 84
IDE
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using On Lisp and Steel Bank Common Lisp. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Social recommendations and mentions

Steel Bank Common Lisp might be a bit more popular than On Lisp. We know about 5 links to it since March 2021 and only 4 links to On Lisp. 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.

On Lisp mentions (4)

  • Prolog-rs: Minimal Prolog implemented in Rust
    See also https://github.com/RussAbbott/pylog which has a toy Prolog implementation and was wondering if it could be done in Python. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Quote-Unquote "Macros"
    Paul Graham's https://paulgraham.com/onlisp.html is a whole book about it that really helped it click for me. The challenge with the syntax is that there is no syntax. Work that we're used to offloading to syntax is instead carried by your brain. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • Defense of Lisp Macros
    BTW, if you're interested in learning more about Lisp macros, Paul Graham's book about advanced Lisp programming, On Lisp, covers the topic pretty extensively and it's freely downloadable from his website: Book description: https://paulgraham.com/onlisp.html Download page: https://paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • [Getting (re)started] Where can I learn about setf?
    Some info can be found here: http://paulgraham.com/onlisp.html. Source: almost 4 years ago

Steel Bank Common Lisp mentions (5)

  • Not only Clojure โ€“ Chez Scheme: Lisp with native code speed
    Tangential: if we're talking Lisp and native code speed, Steel Bank Common Lisp (by default) compiles everything to machine code. [0] https://sbcl.org. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 years ago
  • A few newbie questions about lisp
    Q5: Get http://sbcl.org/. Install https://quicklisp.org/. SBCL is the implementation that's the lowest friction, and Quicklisp is a package manager that's almost* painless. Source: over 2 years ago
  • [C++20][safety] static_assert is all you need (no leaks, no UB)
    That is what we do in Lisp. Try sbcl if you haven't tried it yet. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Trying to wrap my head around `xbps-src`
    I want to add the sbcl-doc subpackage (the manual for SBCL in GNU Info format), but first I need to understand how to write package definitions. As far as I understand there are the "templates" which are shell scripts that describe how a package is to be built and installed, and xbps-src is a shell script which can process these templates to actually carry out the work. Source: almost 4 years ago
  • Ask HN: Areas in Programming to Avoid
    > Lisp looks like Python, that's far from C, and usually it's a "interpreted" language, far from machine the currently most popular Common Lisp implementation is based around an optimizing native code compiler. That compiler has its roots in the early 80s. See https://sbcl.org . It's far away from being 'interpreted'. - Source: Hacker News / over 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing On Lisp and Steel Bank Common Lisp, you can also consider the following products

Practical Common Lisp - Learning Resources

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

Land of Lisp - Learning Resources

Python - Python is a clear and powerful object-oriented programming language, comparable to Perl, Ruby, Scheme, or Java.

Hackr.io - There are tons of online programming courses and tutorials, but it's never easy to find the best one. Try Hackr.io to find the best online courses submitted & voted by the programming community.

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