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PicoLisp VS Common Lisp

Compare PicoLisp VS Common Lisp and see what are their differences

PicoLisp logo PicoLisp

Programming Language

Common Lisp logo Common Lisp

The modern, multi-paradigm, high-performance, compiled, ANSI-standardized descendant of the long-running family of Lisp programming languages
  • PicoLisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-04-26
  • Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

We recommend LibHunt Common Lisp for discovery and comparisons of trending Common Lisp projects.

PicoLisp features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Common Lisp features and specs

  • Powerful Macro System
    Common Lisp offers a robust macro system that allows for metaprogramming, letting developers easily extend the language and create domain-specific languages.
  • Dynamic Typing
    Common Lisp supports dynamic typing, which allows for more flexibility in coding and prototyping, reducing the amount of boilerplate code needed.
  • Interactive Development Environment
    It provides a powerful REPL (Read-Eval-Print Loop) that aids in interactive and iterative software development, enabling quick testing and debugging.
  • Portability
    Code written in Common Lisp can be run on different platforms without modification, thanks to its standardized specification and portability across implementations.
  • Rich Standard Library
    Common Lisp comes with a comprehensive standard library that includes a wide range of utilities for data manipulation, I/O operations, and more.

Possible disadvantages of Common Lisp

  • Steep Learning Curve
    The language has an extensive set of features and a unique syntax, which can be difficult for beginners to learn and master.
  • Limited Ecosystem
    Compared to more modern languages, Common Lisp has a smaller ecosystem of libraries and community support, which can hinder development speed and resources.
  • Performance Variability
    Performance can vary significantly between different implementations of Common Lisp due to variations in optimizing compilers and runtime environments.
  • Obscure Syntax
    The syntax can be difficult to read and understand, especially for those coming from more conventional languages like Python or JavaScript.
  • Commercial Use Challenges
    Common Lisp's licensing and support can be less favorable for commercial use compared to other mainstream programming languages.

PicoLisp videos

PicoLisp VIP Auto-Load and ASCII Diagrams

Common Lisp videos

Common Lisp Study Group - A In-depth Look into CLOS (part 1)

More videos:

  • Review - Common Lisp Study Group - Closures and Macro Basics

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to PicoLisp and Common Lisp)
Programming Language
23 23%
77% 77
IDE
100 100%
0% 0
OOP
21 21%
79% 79
Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Common Lisp might be a bit more popular than PicoLisp. We know about 11 links to it since March 2021 and only 10 links to PicoLisp. 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.

PicoLisp mentions (10)

  • Everything Picolisp can do, and more
    Gotta admit, the author has a nice sense of eDSL https://picolisp.com/wiki/?taskDB. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • The Landscape of Lisp
    It doesn't grow from cons cells, which some people think is crucial for an authentic Lisp. They also tend to exclude Clojure. I think maybe the Janet designers don't want to get bogged down in the language wars, and don't really care whether lispers enjoy their language or not. A language with Lisp in the name and cons cells that a purist might argue isn't an authentic Lisp is Picolisp, e.g. Because it has FEXPR:s... - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Ask HN: Am I crazy or is Android development awful?
    Build your Apps in PicoLisp without an Android SDK "PilBox (`PicoLisp Box') is a generic Android App which allows to write Apps in pure PicoLisp, without touching Java, and without the need of an Android SDK. "You do not need to root your device. And - if you prefer - you do not need a separate development machine (PC or laptop): All can be done in a terminal on the device, and even in a Lisp REPL while the App is... - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Anyone got a contact at OpenAI. They have a spider problem
    A similar thing happened in 2011 when the picolisp project published a 'ticker', something like a markov chain generating pages on the fly. https://picolisp.com/wiki/?ticker It's a nice type of honeypot. - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • PicoLisp Tutorials
    I love(d) PicoLisp. I have run Windows, Linux (many flavors on many machines), and MacOS, but my working OS is Windows, and I could not get the x64 PicoLisp running on Windows back then without using Cygwin or MinGW. I can run it on WSL[1], however, it still requires a POSIX environment. Is there a way to compile a Windows binary without the POSIX required for a working PicoLisp environment? I know it switched to... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
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Common Lisp mentions (11)

  • Origins of the Lisp logo
    The yin-yang logo with lambdas was designed by Guy Steele, and he has granted permission for its use to Common Lisp Foundation (the entity which runs common-lisp.net website and the gitlab.common-lisp.net repo). Source: about 2 years ago
  • New open source Common Lisp 3D graphics project -- call for participation
    A wiki and pm tool I personally like a lot, simple, lightweight, is trac but there is no free hosting available — but I could work on hosting on AWS for instance. MoinMoin is also a good and simple wiki. You are using Medium a lot, which could also be a sensible option but it is more a publishing platform than a collaborative platform. Gitlab is also a popular choice I believe and we could use the instance on... Source: almost 3 years ago
  • common-lisp.net down
    Does anybody have information how the content on common-lisp.net is handled? Source: about 3 years ago
  • common-lisp.net down
    Any insight into the current down-time for common-lisp.net? Source: about 3 years ago
  • What should be my next programming language?
    Python seems like a popular option these days and it is different enough from C++ in that it may teach you to think about programming in a different way. You could also try a functional language such as Lisp, Scheme) or Haskell -- they too will make you think differently about programming. Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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

C++ - Has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing the facilities for low level memory manipulation

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

D (Programming Language) - D is a language with C-like syntax and static typing.

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

Go Programming Language - Go, also called golang, is a programming language initially developed at Google in 2007 by Robert...