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Clozure is a good choice of Lisp to get something done. It's got a really neat FFI (Foreign Function Interface), including an Objective-C bridge that lets you talk with Mac OS X, so you can interface with C libraries to handle all those wheels you really don't want to re-invent.

That said, try to get over your Java prejudice with Clojure. Java libraries are nice.




Java libraries are nice and all, but I could sure do without java.lang.StackOverflowError.

I recently started learning Clojure and was floored when I found out it lacked tail-call optimization. I thought that was pretty much a requirement for a functional language. I understand that it's a limitation of the JVM and that there are workarounds, but they all seem kinda hacky, so I don't really plan to use recursion a whole lot in Clojure. On the other hand, its libraries for building and processing collections are so good that I don't think I will really need to.

No car, cdr, or cons is just weird though, for a language that's considered a Lisp.



I already have an overly healthy dose of self-loathing since I'm mainly programming in PHP. I guess that's why I'm mostly staying away from Java ;-)

And thanks for the further insight on Clozure!


As I see it, OOP PHP 5 is Java without static types and without a proper standard library. I'd regard it as an upgrade coming from PHP. Check out the Play Framework.


And that's exactly why I'd like to try out something that is a lot more different, not just slightly different ;-)


Clojure is not Java. It runs on the JVM. It can use Java methods. But it is not Java.




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