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Comment by w3mmpp | Hacker News Reader

If I may ask, what are the benefits of building this app in LispWorks instead of any other implementation (sbcl or else)?

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I've never used LispWorks, but I think they have their own GUI, support, built-in logic programming (Prolog) for starters.

They also have IDE like tools that are probably ready to go outside the box. Emacs with Slime isn't for everyone (I find it to be a big initial hurdle). Although I'm sure this guy is an Uber emacs expert.

Perhaps we can summon u/lispm for an answer here. I think he possibly works for LispWorks and is usually one of the lisp users on HN & Reddit that can answer questions pretty quick.

Having worked for a long time with emacs and slime, I'd have the opposite fear, to have to develop anything in lisp without them, like this is the case for LispWorks.

> like this is the case for LispWorks.

I'm not sure I understand what you meant there, but you can use LispWorks with Emacs/Slime.

Oh then it's interesting because I thought it required to use their IDE. With Emacs/Slime, is it as integrated as with sbcl for example?

No, you may still want to use the IDE to access functionality that is not available through slime. But you have the choice. According to the slime documentation: "Most features work uniformly across implementations, but some are prone to variation. These include the precision of placing compiler-note annotations, XREF support, and fancy debugger commands (like 'restart frame')."

I'm sure you can use them just fine, but they also have their own tools I think.

I'm not working for LispWorks, but I use it since many years.

LispWorks is a relatively expensive commercial implementation of Common Lisp. There might be several reasons to buy it: cross platform GUI support (Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac), integrated IDE, various delivery options for applications, support for various hardware / operating systems, ... I personally also find the runtime system quite robust.

Good question, since I also use SBCL and Clozure CL (and Armed Bear when I need Java interop).

LispWorks has a very nice portable UI library. That was the selling point for me.

Ah yes, makes sense, I thought it was (only) a web app so I was wondering what benefit LispWorks was bringing.

How do you like their IDE compared to emacs/slime?

Lispworks has a capable IDE. It looks like a 1995 Geocities page but it works well enough. Their editor is Hemlock which is a Common Lisp clone of emacs, so most of the key bindings are the same as emacs and you can rebind them if you wish. Or you can use Lispworks without the IDE and drive it with (real) emacs and SLIME.

Personally I prefer the CCL IDE but it only works on the Mac.

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