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  5. Common Lisp vs Rust

Common Lisp vs Rust

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Rust
Rust
Stacks6.1K
Followers5.0K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars107.6K
Forks13.9K
Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Stacks268
Followers255
Votes145

Common Lisp vs Rust: What are the differences?

Key Differences between Common Lisp and Rust

Introduction

In this article, we will discuss the key differences between Common Lisp and Rust programming languages. Common Lisp is a dynamic, functional programming language known for its powerful macro system and extensive standard library, while Rust is a systems programming language focused on safety, concurrency, and performance.

  1. Memory Safety: One of the most significant differences between Common Lisp and Rust is their approach to memory safety. Common Lisp does not have built-in memory safety features and relies on the programmer's discretion to manage memory manually. On the other hand, Rust guarantees memory safety at compile time through its ownership, borrowing, and lifetimes system. This ensures that Rust programs are free from memory leaks, null pointer dereferences, and data races.

  2. Concurrency: Common Lisp and Rust have different approaches to concurrency. Common Lisp provides built-in support for threads and processes through libraries like Bordeaux-Threads. However, these threads are typically limited to running on a single processor core. In contrast, Rust has built-in support for safe concurrent programming using its ownership model and the "fearless concurrency" philosophy. Rust's concurrency features, such as threads, message-passing channels, and atomic operations, enable the creation of highly concurrent and safe programs that can take full advantage of modern multi-core processors.

  3. Type Systems: Another key difference between Common Lisp and Rust is their type systems. Common Lisp is a dynamically-typed language, where the type of a variable is determined at runtime. This flexibility allows for convenient prototyping and runtime introspection but can lead to type-related errors during execution. Rust, on the other hand, is a statically-typed language with an expressive and powerful type system. The compiler checks types at compile time, providing guarantees about memory safety, type correctness, and concurrency.

  4. Performance: Common Lisp and Rust have different performance characteristics. Common Lisp programs are generally slower compared to Rust due to its dynamic nature and the runtime overhead associated with features like garbage collection and dynamic dispatch. Rust, being a systems programming language, is designed for performance. It offers zero-cost abstractions and fine-grained control over memory, allowing developers to write highly efficient code without sacrificing safety.

  5. Portability: Common Lisp and Rust also differ in terms of portability. Common Lisp, driven by its standardization efforts, has a high degree of portability across different implementations. Code written in Common Lisp can often be executed on different Common Lisp implementations with minimal or no modifications. Rust, being a relatively new language, is still evolving its ecosystem, and code written in one Rust version may require updates to work with newer versions. However, the Rust compiler ensures that programs are portable across different platforms, including Windows, macOS, and various Linux distributions.

  6. Community and Ecosystem: Common Lisp and Rust have distinct communities and ecosystems. Common Lisp has a long history and an established community with a wealth of libraries and frameworks. The Common Lisp ecosystem provides a wide range of tools for various domains, such as web development, artificial intelligence, and game development. Rust, being a younger language, has a growing and passionate community. The Rust ecosystem is notable for its focus on safety and performance, with libraries and tools taking advantage of Rust's unique features. Rust's package manager, Cargo, simplifies dependency management and encourages code reuse.

In summary, while both Common Lisp and Rust are powerful programming languages, they differ in terms of memory safety, concurrency, type systems, performance, portability, and community/ecosystem. Rust offers a strong focus on memory safety and concurrency, with an expressive and efficient type system, while Common Lisp provides flexibility, interoperability, and a rich ecosystem for development.

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Advice on Rust, Common Lisp

Timm
Timm

VP Of Engineering at Flexperto GmbH

Nov 10, 2020

Decided

We have a lot of experience in JavaScript, writing our services in NodeJS allows developers to transition to the back end without any friction, without having to learn a new language. There is also the option to write services in TypeScript, which adds an expressive type layer. The semi-shared ecosystem between front and back end is nice as well, though specifically NodeJS libraries sometimes suffer in quality, compared to other major languages.

As for why we didn't pick the other languages, most of it comes down to "personal preference" and historically grown code bases, but let's do some post-hoc deduction:

Go is a practical choice, reasonably easy to learn, but until we find performance issues with our NodeJS stack, there is simply no reason to switch. The benefits of using NodeJS so far outweigh those of picking Go. This might change in the future.

PHP is a language we're still using in big parts of our system, and are still sometimes writing new code in. Modern PHP has fixed some of its issues, and probably has the fastest development cycle time, but it suffers around modelling complex asynchronous tasks, and (on a personal note) lack of support for writing in a functional style.

We don't use Python, Elixir or Ruby, mostly because of personal preference and for historic reasons.

Rust, though I personally love and use it in my projects, would require us to specifically hire for that, as the learning curve is quite steep. Its web ecosystem is OK by now (see https://www.arewewebyet.org/), but in my opinion, it is still no where near that of the other web languages. In other words, we are not willing to pay the price for playing this innovation card.

Haskell, as with Rust, I personally adore, but is simply too esoteric for us. There are problem domains where it shines, ours is not one of them.

682k views682k
Comments
Johan
Johan

Jan 28, 2021

Decided

Context: Writing an open source CLI tool.

Go and Rust over Python: Simple distribution.

With Go and Rust, just build statically compiled binaries and hand them out.

With Python, have people install with "pip install --user" and not finding the binaries :(.

Go and Rust over Python: Startup and runtime performance

Go and Rust over Python: No need to worry about which Python interpreter version is installed on the users' machines.

Go over Rust: Simplicity; Rust's memory management comes at a development / maintenance cost.

Go over Rust: Easier cross compiles from macOS to Linux.

397k views397k
Comments
Omar
Omar

Feb 23, 2021

Needs adviceonRubyRubyJavaScriptJavaScriptRustRust

I was thinking about adding a new technology to my current stack (Ruby and JavaScript). But, I want a compiled language, mainly for speed and scalability reasons compared to interpreted languages. I have tried each one (Rust, Java, and Kotlin). I loved them, and I don't know which one can offer me more opportunities for the future (I'm in my first year of software engineering at university).

Which language should I choose?

443k views443k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Rust
Rust
Common Lisp
Common Lisp

Rust is a systems programming language that combines strong compile-time correctness guarantees with fast performance. It improves upon the ideas of other systems languages like C++ by providing guaranteed memory safety (no crashes, no data races) and complete control over the lifecycle of memory.

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]

Statistics
GitHub Stars
107.6K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
13.9K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
6.1K
Stacks
268
Followers
5.0K
Followers
255
Votes
1.2K
Votes
145
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 146
    Guaranteed memory safety
  • 133
    Fast
  • 89
    Open source
  • 75
    Minimal runtime
  • 73
    Pattern matching
Cons
  • 28
    Hard to learn
  • 24
    Ownership learning curve
  • 12
    Unfriendly, verbose syntax
  • 4
    Many type operations make it difficult to follow
  • 4
    High size of builded executable
Pros
  • 24
    Flexibility
  • 22
    High-performance
  • 17
    Comfortable: garbage collection, closures, macros, REPL
  • 13
    Stable
  • 12
    Lisp
Cons
  • 4
    Too many Parentheses
  • 3
    Standard did not evolve since 1994
  • 2
    Small library ecosystem
  • 2
    No hygienic macros
  • 1
    Ultra-conservative community

What are some alternatives to Rust, Common Lisp?

JavaScript

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

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.

PHP

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

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!

Golang

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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