An implementation of Common Lisp in development, reached version 1.6
Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.
Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.
It reached version 1.6, now it covers more than 80% of the standard. alisp ships with ASDF and is capable of loading many real-world systems, let me know if your favorite system succeeds! License is GPL3 or later, no LLMs used.
HN · launched May 12, 2026 · 27 upvotes (top 21%) · 0 views
Niche: programming languages and interpreters · 161 launches, 2 in the last 7 days ▼ -75% · Explore this niche →
Category and tags
- Horizontal
- Dev tools
- Developer
- Not AI
- Hobby / open-source project
Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗
More like this: all 161 launches in programming languages and interpreters →
Could you build this?
No Implementing a standard-compliant Common Lisp runtime (including CLOS, condition systems, and ASDF compatibility) requires deep programming language theory and compiler design expertise.
What it would actually take: Creating a Common Lisp implementation covering 80%+ of the ANSI standard involves writing an interpreter/compiler, garbage collector, reader macro system, condition handling runtime, CLOS (Common Lisp Object System) generic dispatch engine, and complex array/type systems. It requires thousands of hours of specialized compiler and language runtime engineering to pass test suites and boot complex systems like ASDF.
Discussion
3 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: ECL, CLISP
Concerns raised: Managing complexity of huge all-in-one main.c file, Completeness - achieving 100% implementation
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one : 12 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #6 of 13 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 188 days after the earliest competitor.
- Julius, a New Lisp Implementation · hn · 2026-05-03 · 14 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Turbo Lisp · hn · 2026-10-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Interactive Common Lisp: An Enhanced REPL · hn · 2025-12-14 · 101 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Metaspec: The DpANS3R Common Lisp Spec in S-Expr and HTML Format · hn · 2026-06-24 · 17 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- GDSL · hn · 2026-03-15 · 89 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- I wrote a technical history book on Lisp · hn · 2026-02-17 · 252 upvotes · similarity 0.35
- I created a RAW to HDRI stacker in (mostly) Common Lisp · hn · 2026-06-05 · 35 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- miso · github · 2026-11-04 · 52 upvotes · similarity 0.32
The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.