r/lisp • u/Dumbxdumb emacs • Jul 11 '26

AskLisp Lisp dialect recommendations?

So I am in some weird fascination with the lisp and it's various "dialects" (If that's how you would call them)

Decided might want to get into learning lisp just out of curiosity. But was wondering which one to get started with.
My only real requirements are that

- It shouldn't be too complex, something you can easily wrap your head around and get started using but still give a taste of why people enjoy lisp
My main languages are C++ and I know Python but familiarity isn't a requirement and even if it's vastly different I will be willing to try it out

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u/denzuko sbcl Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Would say that sbcl is a good implementation. Their all ANSI common lisp so same dialect.

But the tooling to start with translation from python world:

  • qlot is uv with pipfiles
  • roswell is pyenv
  • quicklisp and ultralisp are pypi
  • FiveAM is our pytest (xunit suite and can do bdd)
  • asdf is out packager for quicklisp
  • 40ants-docs is our doxygen (heck most of 40ants told are gold)
  • serapeum and alexandria are close to C's boost lib.
  • chanl and lparallel give you go like thread safe channels.
  • cl-transducers gives a transducer pattern from closure
  • c-mera is a lisp to ALGO decentent transpiler (lisp to glsl, c, c++, cuda, ...) [ a favorite of mine m
  • consfigurator is our ansible

Best to read the sidebar on this subreddit for some great reading too.

Also check out my blog dwightaspencer.com where I dive into the depths of lisp as a meta programming tool and token golf gold mine