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Steel Bank Common Lisp VS Guile

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

Steel Bank Common Lisp logo Steel Bank Common Lisp

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

Guile logo Guile

Guile is the GNU Ubiquitous Intelligent Language for Extensions, the official extension language for the GNU operating system.
  • Steel Bank Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-04-24
  • Guile Landing page
    Landing page //
    2020-01-01

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.

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.

Steel Bank Common Lisp videos

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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 Steel Bank Common Lisp and Guile)
Programming Language
56 56%
44% 44
IDE
70 70%
30% 30
OOP
51 51%
49% 49
Generic Programming Language

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Steel Bank Common Lisp seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 5 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.

Steel Bank Common Lisp mentions (5)

  • Not only Clojure – 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 / over 1 year 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: about 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: about 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: over 3 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 / almost 4 years ago

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 Steel Bank Common Lisp and Guile, you can also consider the following products

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

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

CMU Common Lisp - CMUCL is a high-performance, free Common Lisp implementation.

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

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

MLton - MLton is an open-source, whole-program, optimizing Standard ML compiler