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Zig VS Practical Common Lisp

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

Zig logo Zig

Zig is a general-purpose programming language designed for robustness, optimality, and maintainability.

Practical Common Lisp logo Practical Common Lisp

Learning Resources
  • Zig Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-19

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

  • Practical Common Lisp Landing page
    Landing page //
    2019-12-25

Zig features and specs

  • Performance
    Zig aims to offer high performance comparable to C or C++, allowing it to be suitable for system-level programming.
  • Safety
    It includes modern safety features like optional type checking, bounds checking, and panic handling without a garbage collector.
  • Interoperability
    Zig has excellent interoperability with C, including the ability to directly include C headers and compile C code.
  • Build System
    Zig comes with an integrated build system that simplifies project configuration and management.
  • Cross-compilation
    The language has built-in support for cross-compilation, making it easier to develop for different target environments.
  • Simplicity
    Zig aims for simplicity and explicitness in its design, making code easy to read and understand.

Possible disadvantages of Zig

  • Maturity
    Zig is still relatively new and under active development, which means it may not yet have as many libraries or tools as more established languages.
  • Community
    The community is growing but still small compared to languages like C, C++, or Rust, which may make finding resources or support more challenging.
  • Learning Curve
    Newcomers to system programming or those used to managed languages might find Zig's low-level features and manual memory management challenging.
  • Ecosystem
    While growing, Zig does not yet have as rich an ecosystem of third-party libraries and frameworks as more established languages.
  • Documentation
    Though improving, the documentation is not as comprehensive as more mature languages, which can slow down the learning and development process.

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.

Analysis of Zig

Overall verdict

  • Zig is a highly promising language for those interested in system-level programming with a modern toolset. It offers a unique combination of performance and safety features, making it a strong competitor to more established languages in this domain such as C and C++.

Why this product is good

  • Zig is gaining attention due to its focus on simplicity, performance, and robustness. It provides manual control over memory management, which is appealing for system programming. Its tooling, such as a built-in package manager and the compiler's ability to cross-compile, is also praised. Additionally, the language has a strong emphasis on safety features without sacrificing low-level access.

Recommended for

  • System programmers looking for a modern alternative to C/C++
  • Developers interested in low-level programming with safety features
  • Programmers needing robust cross-compilation support
  • Someone who values explicitness and manual control over memory

Zig videos

UNHYPE: CRAZY COLLAB Braindead x REEBOK ZIG Kinetica II REVIEW

More videos:

  • Review - Reebok ZIG Kinetica REVIEW [Conor McGregor Shoes] - Durable Everyday Training Sneakers
  • Review - Zig Dynamica - Full Review

Practical Common Lisp videos

Practical Common Lisp

More videos:

  • Review - Practical Common Lisp

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Zig and Practical Common Lisp)
Programming Language
86 86%
14% 14
Education
0 0%
100% 100
OOP
86 86%
14% 14
Generic Programming Language

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Zig should be more popular than Practical Common Lisp. It has been mentiond 156 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.

Zig mentions (156)

  • What is Bun? The Node.js Alternative Explained
    Bun is written from scratch in Zig, a low-level language focused on performance and safety. Instead of using V8 (the engine behind Node and Deno), Bun runs on JavaScriptCore, the engine used in Safari. This choice helps it stay fast and efficient, both in terms of memory and startup time. - Source: dev.to / 19 days ago
  • RawWeb Updates: SimHash and Meilisearch
    For local testing, just run cargo build --release. But cross-platform compilation is much more complicated. Fortunately, the Zig toolchain greatly simplifies C cross-compilation, eliminating the need for musl libc! - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • F8 – an 8 bit architecture designed for C and memory efficiency [video]
    Https://ziglang.org/ is a solid future C-replacement, IMHO. There's pretty much no downsides and all upsides from a C hacker's perspective. It just hasn't reached 1.0 yet! - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Rust Kernel Policy
    But the situation for Rust-C++ interop is also worse than for Rust-C interop. Why else would Google spend maybe $1 million on improving it in 2024? https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/05/google_rust_donation/ Many years after Rust got support in Mozilla for usage with Firefox written in C++. >My sibling is also correct, language decisions were made in order to keep FFI zero overhead. Yet overhead is only one piece... - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
  • Ask HN: What are some software projects with impressive websites?
    I am looking for some inspiration at websites for software projects that do a very good of job explaining their product right from the get go. Things like programming language or database home pages/docs or open source projects with good git READMEs. Though I've never used it, I think https://ziglang.org/ is a great example as it explains what makes the language unique, gives a code example right at the beginning,... - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
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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 / 5 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 / 9 months ago
  • Defense of Lisp Macros
    The Giga Monkeys Book, Practical Common Lisp is also excellent: https://gigamonkeys.com/book/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 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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What are some alternatives?

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

Nim (programming language) - The Nim programming language is a concise, fast programming language that compiles to C, C++ and JavaScript.

Land of Lisp - Learning Resources

V (programming language) - Simple, fast, safe, compiled language for developing maintainable software.

Crystal (programming language) - Programming language with Ruby-like syntax that compiles to efficient native code.

On Lisp - Learning Resources

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