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Practical Common Lisp VS Guile

Compare Practical Common Lisp VS Guile and see what are their differences

Practical Common Lisp logo Practical Common Lisp

Learning Resources

Guile logo Guile

Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system.
  • Practical Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-12-25
  • Guile Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-01-01

Practical Common Lisp features and specs

  • Comprehensive Introduction
    The book offers a thorough introduction to Common Lisp programming, catering to both beginners and experienced programmers by covering the basics and advanced topics.
  • Practical Approach
    It emphasizes practical applications of Lisp, with numerous examples and projects that illustrate real-world usage, making it useful for learning how to write practical and efficient code.
  • Engaging Writing Style
    The author maintains an engaging and accessible writing style that keeps readers interested while explaining complex concepts in an understandable manner.
  • Free Access Online
    The book is available for free online, providing easy access to anyone interested in learning about Common Lisp without financial barriers.

Possible disadvantages of Practical Common Lisp

  • Assumes Prior Programming Knowledge
    The book may assume that readers have some programming background, which might make it challenging for complete beginners to grasp certain concepts quickly.
  • Dated Examples
    Given its publication date, some examples might be somewhat outdated in terms of current technological standards and might not represent the latest best practices in programming.
  • Focus on High-Level Understanding
    While it covers many aspects of Lisp, the book might not delve deeply into certain advanced technical details, which could be a downside for those seeking in-depth technical expertise.
  • Limited Coverage of Modern Libraries
    The book might not address newer libraries and tools that have emerged in the Lisp ecosystem since its publication, potentially missing out on some modern practices.

Guile features and specs

  • Extensibility
    Guile is designed to be embedded into applications, allowing developers to extend their software with scripting capabilities.
  • Scheme Language
    Guile is based on Scheme, a minimalist and flexible dialect of Lisp, which encourages learning and adoption due to its simplicity and power.
  • Integration with C
    Guile can be easily integrated with C programs, allowing the use of C libraries and functionalities within scripts.
  • Garbage Collection
    Guile provides automatic memory management through garbage collection, which can simplify memory management tasks for developers.
  • Portability
    Guile is designed to be portable across different platforms, making it a versatile choice for cross-platform development.
  • GNU Project
    As part of the GNU Project, Guile comes with the support of a large and active open-source community, which can be beneficial for development and troubleshooting.

Possible disadvantages of Guile

  • Performance
    Compared to some other programming languages and scripting tools, Guile may not be as performant, especially in computation-heavy tasks.
  • Popularity
    Guile is less popular than some other scripting languages, which might lead to fewer resources, libraries, and community support.
  • Learning Curve
    Despite Scheme's minimalist design, developers unfamiliar with Lisp-like syntax might face a learning curve before becoming proficient with Guile.
  • Limited Educational Resources
    There are fewer tutorials, books, and courses focused specifically on Guile compared to other more widely-used scripting languages.
  • Integration Complexity
    Embedding Guile in an application may require additional effort and understanding of both the application and Guile's API.

Practical Common Lisp videos

Practical Common Lisp

More videos:

  • Review - Practical Common Lisp

Guile videos

Guile Review - with Tom Vasel

More videos:

  • Review - Guile Review - with Ryan Metzler
  • Review - Storm Collectibles GUILE Street Fighter Review BR / DiegoHDM

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Practical Common Lisp and Guile)
Education
100 100%
0% 0
Programming Language
48 48%
52% 52
OOP
45 45%
55% 55
IDE
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Practical Common Lisp seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 52 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.

Practical Common Lisp mentions (52)

  • I Chose Common Lisp
    I began learning Common Lisp (CL) from the Common Lisp HyperSpec (CLHS): https://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm When I began learning CL about two decades ago, I did not know of any other source, so CLHS was my only source back then and I think it has served me well. A popular recommendation these days is Practical Common Lisp (by Peter Seibel): https://gigamonkeys.com/book/. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Holding a Program in One's Head (2007)
    A quote originally (AFAIK) from the wonderful (and free!) book 'Practical Common Lisp'. https://gigamonkeys.com/book/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • Defense of Lisp Macros
    The Giga Monkeys Book, Practical Common Lisp is also excellent: https://gigamonkeys.com/book/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • The Loudest Lisp Program
    > So it's really pick your poison; either the child controls the call, at the risk of doing it wrong or not at all, or it doesn't but then certain things become impossible. CL lets you do both in various ways: the typical way to define a constructor is an :AFTER method that just sets the slots (fields in other languages) of the object and having a lot of behavior in constructors is unusual. You can also define an... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
  • The Loudest Lisp Program
    There are a bunch of things to learn from Lisp: * list processing -> model data as lists and process those * list processing applied to Lisp -> model programs as lists and process those -> EVAL and COMPILE * EVAL, the interpreter as a Lisp program * write programs to process programs -> code generators, macros, ... * write programs in a more declarative way -> a code generator transforms the description into... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 year ago
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Guile mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Guile yet. Tracking of Guile recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

Land of Lisp - Learning Resources

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

On Lisp - Learning Resources

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

Real World Haskell - Learning Resources, Programming Courses, and Learn Programming

Gambit - Cross-platform chess game.