What is the best Scheme or LISP implementation for OS X? [closed]

Question

I am looking for a version of Scheme or even LISP that I can use to recover some lost Lisp development skills. Some web capabilities would be nice but not essential.

I've looked at Plt and MIT scheme and, while both look pretty good, the Plt seems to be more feature rich. I've also looked at Lisp implementations but all of the seem quite expensive.

I favor free/inexpensive implementations as this is truly likely to just be occasional hobby programming. What recommendations would you have?

Answer 1

I'd go with Racket. It may not be as fast as SBCL, but it does have excellent libraries and documentation, as well as an integrated environment that's designed to get you developing and running Scheme programs right out of the gate. What I really like about Racket's IDE, DrRacket, is what you don't have to do—you don't have to learn Emacs, you don't have to learn SLIME, you don't have to worry about hunting down third-party libraries, as virtually all libraries meant for Racket can be found in packages. All in all, it really cuts down on the learning curve and allows you to focus on the actual task at hand: writing great code.

Also, it comes with a web server if you want to make Racket-powered websites (which I'm currently looking into).

Answer 2

I did quite a bit of experimenting with this.

Clozure Common Lisp (née Open MCL) is by far the fastest; 25-30 percent faster than the next competitor on my intel Mac Mini.

MIT Scheme works quite nicely on a Mac. I think I eventually compiled it myself, but there are binaries at that site. PLT Scheme is also nice, and possibly a little better integrated into the Mac world. (PLT Scheme is now known as Racket, but I haven't experimented with it after the change.)