Re: Emacs Lisp's future

[Helmut Eller <eller.helmut@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Sep 17 2014, Stefan Monnier wrote:

>>> It is the lisp which sage supports (they have a funding grant which
>>> requires that sage be installable from source on just about anything
>>> which has an existing C compiler) and the maxima tests consistantly
>>> show it as second only to compiled-to-machine-code lisps like sbcl.
>
> Note that this speed is probably only for "compiled code".

The story that I've heard is that Maxima uses primarily GCL (not ECL,
though it would also work in ECL and other CLs) and that GCL is fast in
that case because Maxima uses old-fashioned idioms a lot, like EVAL all
over the place.

The last thing I've heard of ECL is that it's searching a new maintainer
because the current one can no longer use it at work (university context
where the Lisp using project has ended).  There's also a fork of ECL
called MKCL with supposedly better multithreading.

Just saying, because ECL is apparently also short on man power.

Helmut