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Rust VS Common Lisp

Compare Rust VS Common Lisp and see what are their differences

Rust logo Rust

A safe, concurrent, practical 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
  • Rust Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-05-09

We recommend LibHunt Rust for discovery and comparisons of trending Rust projects.

  • Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-18

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

Rust features and specs

  • Memory Safety
    Rust’s ownership system guarantees memory safety without a garbage collector, preventing common bugs such as null pointer dereferencing, buffer overflows, and data races.
  • Performance
    Rust aims to provide memory safety while maintaining high performance. It is often as fast as C and C++ due to zero-cost abstractions.
  • Concurrency
    Rust's ownership and type system make it easier to write safe concurrent code, helping developers avoid concurrency issues.
  • Tooling
    Rust has excellent tooling, including the Cargo package manager and build system, and Rustfmt for code formatting.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Rust has a growing community and ecosystem, with active contributions and a wide range of libraries and frameworks available.
  • Strong Typing and Error Handling
    Rust’s type system and pattern matching compel developers to handle errors and edge cases, leading to more robust and predictable code.

Possible disadvantages of Rust

  • Learning Curve
    Rust’s advanced features such as its ownership system and lifetimes can be difficult for beginners to grasp, making it harder to learn compared to some other languages.
  • Compilation Time
    Rust can have longer compilation times, especially for large codebases, which can slow down the development process.
  • Ecosystem Maturity
    Although growing, Rust's ecosystem is not yet as mature as those of more established languages like JavaScript, Python, or even C++, leading to fewer available libraries and frameworks for certain tasks.
  • Complexity of Code
    The strictness of Rust's borrow checker can lead to more complex and verbose code as developers explicitly manage ownership and lifetimes.
  • Tool and Library Development
    Despite the rapid growth, some tools and libraries are still under development or lack the polish of their counterparts in more mature languages.

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.

Analysis of Rust

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Rust is considered very good by many developers, especially those who need to write safe and efficient code. Its growing community and ecosystem are further testament to its strengths.

Why this product is good

  • Rust is highly regarded for its memory safety without a garbage collector, providing developers with performance and safety guarantees. It has powerful concurrency support, expressive type system, and excellent tooling, making it a favorite for systems programming, web assembly, and other performance-critical applications.

Recommended for

  • System programmers who need to manage memory and resources efficiently.
  • Developers working on web assembly projects.
  • Teams that require safe concurrency mechanisms.
  • C and C++ developers looking for modern language alternatives.
  • Open-source contributors who want to be part of an active and welcoming community.

Rust videos

Rust Crash Course | Rustlang

More videos:

  • Review - Why You Should & Shouldn't Learn the Rust Programming Language
  • Review - All About Rust

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 Rust and Common Lisp)
Programming Language
80 80%
20% 20
OOP
81 81%
19% 19
Generic Programming Language
Development
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Rust and Common Lisp

Rust Reviews

Top 5 Most Liked and Hated Programming Languages of 2022
A survey by Stack Overflow reveals that about 83.5% of 90000 developers loved Rust and tagged it to be the most adorable programming language. Rust is that general-purpose programming language that mainly caters to excellent performance and safety. This multi-worldview programming language has syntax similar to that of C++.
Top 10 Rust Alternatives
Several programming languages like Rust are among the popular ones. However, people are in search of some good alternatives to Rust. Therefore, today we will be talking more about the top 10 alternatives to Rust.
The 10 Best Programming Languages to Learn Today
Rust is a fairly advanced language, so you'll want to master another language or two before learning Rust. But you'll find that learning Rust pays off generously. The average salary for a Rust developer in the U.S. is $105,000 per year.
Source: ict.gov.ge

Common Lisp Reviews

We have no reviews of Common Lisp yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Rust should be more popular than Common Lisp. It has been mentiond 48 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.

Rust mentions (48)

  • Useful Clippy lints
    Hello! Rust has very useful tool, named Cargo. It helps you compile code, run program, run tests and benches, format code using cargo fmt and lint it using clippy. In this post we'll talk abou Clippy. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Minimalist blog with Zola, AWS CDK, and Tailwind CSS - Part 1
    What are we going to do today? We're going to build a minimalist blog using Zola (built with Rust, btw), AWS CDK, Tailwind CSS, and a tiny bit of Typescript. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • This Tool can remove 98% Bloatware apps
    Effortlessly remove up to 98% of bloatware apps from your Android device without needing root access. Developed in Rust for efficiency and reliability. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • What Language Should I Choose?
    One language that really gave me that feeling was Gleam, it managed to wrap everything I liked about languages such as JS, Rust and even Java into one brilliant type-safe package. Not for a long time before I met Gleam had I wanted to try creating so many different things just to get to the bottom of how this language ticked, as it were. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • Learning Rust: Enumerating Excellence
    Let's dive back into Rust! This time we're going to be going through the lesson called "Enums and Pattern Matching". We're going to be looking at inferring meaning with our data, how we can use match to execute different code depending on input and finally we'll have a look at if let. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year 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 Rust and Common Lisp, you can also consider the following products

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

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

Java - A concurrent, class-based, object-oriented, language specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible

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

JavaScript - Lightweight, interpreted, object-oriented language with first-class functions

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