Pensieri di un lunatico minore

Common Lisp and C

There is a common thought that every language in the world is “written in C.” This is probably largely a recent thing with the rise of Python, Ruby, Perl, etc., where the core system is written in C, and a large amount of the code is in C. Bill Clementson talks about this in the context of Common Lisp, and comes back with what I think is the accurate observation from Edi Weitz:

Saying that CMUCL is partly implemented in C is a bit of a stretch IMHO. It’s like saying that Apache is partly implemented as a shell script… :)

There is also a look at Allegro Common Lisp, which is the premier implementation in terms of functionality and performance.