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Cl-kawa: Scheme on Java on Common Lisp

88 points by varjag

by mark_l_watson

1 subcomments

Github user atgreen has a large number of really interesting Common Lisp projects: https://github.com/atgreen
I am a fan.

by nxobject

2 subcomments

The OpenLDK is very interesting - it looks like it “compiles” to the vintage procedural dialect within CL (eg TAGBODY etc.) I wonder if someone’s ever bypassed the “procedural Lisp” level and just used a CL implementation’s internal assembler interactively, though. (IIRC both SBCL and CCL expose theirs.)

by atgreen

0 subcomment

If you are interested in this, you might also be interested to learn that I also got clojure running on SBCL via OpenLDK. See https://github.com/atgreen/cl-clojure.
Regarding LLM-usage, the bulk of OpenLDK was written without the use of LLMs. But recently I let Claude loose on the code to fix a few remaining problems blocking kawa. Claude also upleveled the Java support from Java 8 to Java 21.
I wrote a couple of blog entries related to this work that might be of interest. One was around how I had to use the MOP to optimize method dispatch in CLOS for clojure: https://atgreen.github.io/repl-yell/posts/clos-mop-dispatch/

by Per_Bothner

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What a blast from the past! I too remember with pleasure the days working with Anthony Green (and others) at Cygnus. I like to boast that (apart from Java) Kawa Scheme is the oldest compiler-based language implementation still available for the JVM.

by zombot

3 subcomments

I haven't tried it, but the description sounds delightfully perverse. And an LLM (Claude) cannot be embarrassed by perverting Lisp/Scheme with Java.

by stared

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I had to check if the creator is Polish, as "ciekawa" means "interesting". But apparently, just a coincidence.

by varjag

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Perhaps someone could port Arc to Kawa! Then the whole contraption could run HN on SBCL in a roundabout way.

by atgreen

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Here's something I wrote about this work: https://atgreen.github.io/repl-yell/posts/cl-kawa/

by anthk

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On OpenLDK, if it's able to run something like SweetHome3D at usable speeds I would consider it a success and an interesting exercise.

by rhkalth

1 subcomments