Dialects of Lisp

I've seen Common Lisp start to make a great comeback in the past few years. I started programming in it seriously about a year and half ago, and since then the packaging system (quicklisp) and libraries for it are maturing very rapidly. A lot of people are making useful libraries for practical purposes.<p>A lot of people say the language's timing was off. I couldn't agree more. However, it's starting to get a second chance. There are several open-source implementations that compile to machine code and/or support threading/networking/etc. Deployment is essentially free. For every feature that an implementation has that's not in the standard, there's a library that creates a standard, cross-implementation interface for it (for instance threading and the "bordeaux-threads" library).<p>The language is screaming fast, extremely expressive and powerful (insert mandatory macro hype here), and becoming "standardized" all over again via its libraries. I use it (Clozure CL) in production and haven't ever had an issue.

If I were to bet, I'd place my money on Clojure as the 100 year language. It is as unbound by hardware in regard to cross platform development as any other likely candidate, it has good access to libraries meeting contemporary expectations, and is likely to continue to have access to new libraries written to meet future expectations - all due to its interaction with the JVM (and .NET).<p>Of course I am adopting PG's premise that the 100 year language is a LISP while ignoring his premise that it is not a bit kludged up by practical considerations (i.e. the ugliness of its dependence on the JVM).<p>(/edit) Clojure also has an evangelist in Rich Hickey whom people seem to respect independently of Clojure.

I'm not familiar with a lot of other dialects, but the information on Racket is <i>terrible.</i> I wouldn't trust any of the other responses.<p>Racket is <i>not</i> an R6RS scheme, it's... Racket. R6RS is an available language/library in Racket, but it's not what you usually use[1].<p>Racket has also <i>always</i> been a language laboratory, not just a scheme. I'd also wager that it's the most popular scheme used today, maybe even the most popular lisp.<p>[1] The Racket primary language is specified with #lang Racket, R6RS is specified with #lang r6rs. R5RS is specified with #lang r5rs.

This answer references Chicken Scheme, which compiles to C - I'm curious, is there any work on a Scheme that compiles to LLVM? (A brief search didn't reveal anything that's been updated in the last 4-5 years.)

I wonder if Arc is finished or dead. I like it it seems the ecosystem is missing.

No mention of NewLisp?

Why don't people do things like this for Dialects of Algol? Is it because most of them got new names, like Java, C, and so on?

The way is Scheme -&#62; Common Lisp -&#62; Arc.<p>Scheme comes first because it is more refined and there are excellent courses and books.<p>CS61A probably the best introductory course. After that it is good to watch original SICP lectures by the two magicians and read the book. Then it is necessary to take a look at what HtDP team is teaching.<p><i>After</i> this there will be no trouble with Common Lisp. Classic books are these by pg and Norvig. CLtL is just a reference.<p>Then, with all the knowledge so far one could understand arc.arc and appreciate what have been done there.)<p>With this background you will understand what Clojure really is and why, or what is Haskell, and why there is nothing special in it.<p>btw, there is a brilliant course by Dan Grossman on coursera covering FP. He is very clever and consistent. After this you will smile at Haskell guys.)<p>Update:<p>I forgot Emacs Lisp. <i>An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp</i> is an excellent book that covers all the basic principles and gives a perspective how to use lisp in a real-world project.)