Updated April 10, 2023
Difference between Clojure vs Common lisp
Clojure is a dynamic functional programming language which is a dialect of lisp programming language with a combination of efficient and robust features for multithreading and concurrency and runs on JVM which is a java platform and also features such as provides access to java frameworks, a rich set of immutable data structures that can share the code as data. Common lisp is an exploratory programming language which is also a dialect of lisp programming language with a featured combination of procedural, object-oriented, and functional paradigm of programming language which is multi-paradigm, dynamic, and general-purpose language that is suitable for incremental software development. In this topic, we are going to learn about Clojure vs Common lisp.
Head to Head Comparison Between Clojure vs Common lisp (Infographics)
Below are the top differences between Clojure and Common lisp
Key Differences between Clojure and Common lisp
Here are the following key differences mention below
Data Structure support
In Clojure, it allows supporting data structure that immutable which is highly followed in Clojure and is hence it is said most programmers are using this immutable data in their code which is by default feature to be followed. Whereas, in common lisp allows most widely for imperative programming which supports data structures that operate on mutable objects but common lisp supports both functional programming and imperative programming.
Type of programming language
Clojure allows immutable data structure support and hence it mainly supports functional programming language with multi-paradigm such as macro, logic, pipeline, functional and agent-oriented, multithreading, and concurrency support. Whereas common lisp mainly allows or operates on mutable objects but it supports both functional programming and imperative programming with multi-paradigm such as genric, procedural, functional, object-oriented, meta, and reflective support.
Cons cells
In Clojure, cons cells exist where this feature makes the developers or programmers go for Clojure from any other programming language. Whereas, common lisp also provides cons cells existence which is two element structure which is usually the basic essential of all lisp programming language, and is these cons cells can be created using “cons” keyword.
Concurrency
Clojure is best at writing concurrent programs as it provides immutable data structure which also provides software transaction memory, functional programming, etc, and hence the developers can focus on developing features instead of concurrency concepts. Whereas in common lisp also provides the concept of concurrent programming which in turn can design and implement concurrent LISP interpreter for simultaneous evaluation of the list of LISP forms.
Comparison Table
| S.NO | Clojure | Common Lisp |
| 1 | Clojure is defined as a dialect of lisp programming language which is a dynamic, general purpose programming language with multithreading and concurrency features. | Common lisp is defined as a major dialect of lisp programming language which is also dynamic, a general purpose programming language with procedural, multi-paradigm, and object-oriented features. |
| 2 | As Clojure is robust for multithreading and concurrency along with a rich set of immutable data structures, it supports a functional programming language. | As common lisp is both dynamic and exploratory language it supports both functional programming and imperative programming and also in a mutable state. |
| 3 | Clojure can be used for a wide variety of big data projects which will provide solutions for the social networking industry to Big data solutions. | Common lisp is used for a wide variety of any type of applications with particular interest for machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and much more advanced programming with the recursive logic requirement. |
| 4 | Clojure has core data structures that are immutable and provide the seq abstraction over all its data structures. | Common lisp also has a various data structure which are mutable data structures that operates on mutable objects. |
| 5 | Clojure supports a cross-platform feature which compiles and runs on JVM. | Common lisp also supports cross-platform feature as this common lisp programs can be run on Linux, Windows, etc. |
| 6 | Clojure is designed by Rich Hickey which supports file extensions such as .clj, .cljs, .cljc, .edn, etc which provides strong and dynamically typed programming language. | Common lisp which is invented by Guy L. Steele and this programming language supports file extensions such as .lsp, .l, .cl, .fasl, etc. which provides strong and dynamically typed programming language. |
| 7 | Clojure supports paradigm like multi-paradigm such as functional, agent-oriented, concurrent, macro, logic, pipeline, etc. | Common lisp supports paradigm like multi-paradigm such as object-oriented, meta, reflective, generic, functional, procedural, etc. |
| 8 | Clojure also provides the ability of existence of cons cells which is an important concept any Lisper would notice to work with Closure. | Common lisp also provides the feature of cons cells existence which cons cells in common lisp are two element structure and is created using “cons” keyword. |
| 9 | Clojure runs on JVM which makes it run slow when it is compared to any other programming language along with huge ecosystem libraries that can be used in the Clojure programming. | Common lisp comparatively faster than Clojure as it uses compilers like SBCL which makes common lisp faster than C programming or any other low-level programming language and it also provides a variety of different libraries for different concepts that can be included in the program for easy execution. |
| 10 | Clojure provides no much syntax concepts as LISP programs are simple which they just contain functions and data and hence it makes Clojure the easiest and understanding functional language for beginners | In common lisp also provides certain special characters or the ways in which the syntax of common lisp are used. The syntax concept in common lisp includes all special characters such as left & right parenthesis, acute accent, double quotes, semicolon, backslash, input/output streams, etc. |
Conclusion
In this article, we conclude that Clojure is a mainly functional programming language that is capable of immutable data structure support whereas common lisp supports both imperative and functional programming language with the mutable data structure. Hence we can say there is no much difference between these two as both are the dialect of lisp programming language. The developers or programmers should choose among these according to the need or requirement to work on the various big data solutions.
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