[Openmcl-devel] The M1 port and the future of CCL

[Robert Goldman]

On 22 Nov 2023, at 15:37, Ron Garret wrote:

>> On Nov 22, 2023, at 1:20 PM, Scott L. Burson <Scott at sympoiesis.com> wrote:
>>
>> It would be nice to see CCL kept alive, but personally, I've settled on ABCL.  The JVM's GC technology is unmatched, the Java interop is occasionally useful, and it's completely future-proof.
>
> I'm not sure that's true.  Flash was once considered future-proof and you can see how that went.  The future of Java is entirely up to Oracle at this point.  I'll grant you that makes it a good bet, but it's not a guarantee.
>
> I'd bet on C (ECL) before I bet on Java.  No one company could kill it even if they wanted to.
>
> rg

I use CL for computationally challenging processes (see, e.g., https://github.com/shop-planner/shop3).  ECL's compiler generates code that is simply too sluggish to be usable for such problems.  I would warn you away from that. TBH, I think pushing CL code through a C compiler is a losing proposition -- the development environment is also unpleasant and sluggish to work with.  For that matter, although I have used ABCL to script Java applications happily, its code is also way too sluggish for practical use as a "main" programming language (as opposed to a scripting shell).

If CCL goes away (I hope it does not, but I agree it will be very challenging to keep it alive), then unless you are willing to pay for LispWorks or Allegro, SBCL is the only game in town.

Of course this is all my personal opinion and YMMV and YUCMV (Your Use Case May Vary).

Best,
R