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Common Lisp vs Racket: What are the differences?
Introduction: Common Lisp and Racket are both popular programming languages in the Lisp family, known for their powerful features and flexibility. However, they also have some key differences that set them apart from each other.
- Syntax: Common Lisp has a more traditional syntax with its use of parentheses and prefix notation, while Racket allows for more flexibility with different syntaxes, such as infix and prefix, making it easier for beginners to adapt to.
- Purpose: Common Lisp is widely used in AI research, language design, and system programming, while Racket is often utilized in education, research projects, and as a scripting language due to its simplicity and extensibility.
- Modules and Libraries: Racket has a module system that promotes better organization and reuse of code, making it easier to collaborate on projects, whereas Common Lisp relies more on external libraries for additional functionalities.
- Development Environment: Racket provides a powerful IDE called DrRacket that includes debugging tools, module browsers, and language-sensitive editors, offering a user-friendly environment for developers, while Common Lisp lacks a standardized IDE, leading to developers using third-party tools like Emacs or SLIME for development.
- Community and Support: Common Lisp has a mature and active community with a wider range of libraries and resources available, making it easier for developers to find solutions and support for their projects compared to Racket, which has a smaller community and fewer resources.
- Concurrency: Racket's runtime system provides built-in support for lightweight concurrency, making it easier to write parallel programs, whereas Common Lisp requires external libraries such as Bordeaux Threads for implementing concurrent and parallel programming.
In Summary, the key differences between Common Lisp and Racket lie in their syntax, purpose, module systems, development environments, community support, and concurrency capabilities.
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Learn MorePros of Common Lisp
Pros of Racket
Pros of Common Lisp
- Flexibility24
- High-performance22
- Comfortable: garbage collection, closures, macros, REPL17
- Stable13
- Lisp12
- Code is data8
- Can integrate with C (via CFFI)6
- Multi paradigm6
- Lisp is fun5
- Macros4
- Easy Setup4
- Parentheses3
- Open source3
- Purelly functional3
- Elegant3
- DSLs1
- Multiple values1
- CLOS/MOP1
- Clean semantics1
- Will still be relevant 100 years from now1
- Still decades ahead of almost all programming languages1
- Best programming language1
- Simple syntax1
- Powerful1
- Generic functions1
- Can implement almost any feature as a library1
- Formal specification, multiple implementations1
Pros of Racket
- Meta-programming4
- Hygienic macros3
- FFI2
- Great libraries2
- Beautiful code2
- Rapid development2
- Fast2
- Gradual typing2
- Nanopass compiler2
- Extensible2
- Racket Macro system2
- Cross platform GUI2
- Module system2
- Macro Stepper2
- Beginner friendly2
- Built-in concurrency2
- Built-in parallelism2
- Functional Programming2
- Open source2
- Language-oriented programming2
- Pattern matching2
- Easy syntax1
- Type inference1
- Static type-checker1
- Racketscript1
- Great community1
- IDE1
- Typed Racket1
- Good documentation1
- Efficient compiler1
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Cons of Common Lisp
Cons of Racket
Cons of Common Lisp
- Too many Parentheses4
- Standard did not evolve since 19943
- Small library ecosystem2
- No hygienic macros2
- Inadequate community infrastructure1
- Ultra-conservative community1
Cons of Racket
- LISP BASED2
- No GitHub2
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What is Common Lisp?
Lisp was originally created as a practical mathematical notation for computer programs, influenced by the notation of Alonzo Church's lambda calculus. It quickly became the favored programming language for artificial intelligence (AI) research. As one of the earliest programming languages, Lisp pioneered many ideas in computer science, including tree data structures, automatic storage management, dynamic typing, conditionals, higher-order functions, recursion, and the self-hosting compiler. [source: wikipedia]
What is Racket?
It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.
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What companies use Common Lisp?
What companies use Racket?
What companies use Common Lisp?
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What tools integrate with Common Lisp?
What tools integrate with Racket?
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What are some alternatives to Common Lisp and Racket?
Clojure
Clojure is designed to be a general-purpose language, combining the approachability and interactive development of a scripting language with an efficient and robust infrastructure for multithreaded programming. Clojure is a compiled language - it compiles directly to JVM bytecode, yet remains completely dynamic. Clojure is a dialect of Lisp, and shares with Lisp the code-as-data philosophy and a powerful macro system.
Haskell
It is a general purpose language that can be used in any domain and use case, it is ideally suited for proprietary business logic and data analysis, fast prototyping and enhancing existing software environments with correct code, performance and scalability.
Python
Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.
Java
Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!
C lang