I also use CLISP for just that reason. Stuff I have to write has to be cross platform and CLISP is as good in that regard as Java but is faster and more memory efficient. CLISP supports both UFFI and CFFI. There is also swig. There is also an inexpensive (Free for personal, $250 for redistribution) commercial CL for windows called Corman Common Lisp. It looks quite good and has both Windows API and COM support. It also compiles to very fast native code.

As far as .net is concerned there is RDNZL but there is also http://foil.sourceforge.net/

The last time I looked at FFI, I was playing with CLISP (I’m running on Windows). Without UFFI support, it was very hard to get ODBC going, which is the bare minimum for a toy project.

Your point about aspect oriented programming being easier with Lisp et c…. I’m already sold on that. I’m only voicing what are the barriers that keep me using more Lisp.

Your choice to talk about standards is ironic given that Java is not standardized and C# has a very superficial standard where common lisps standard is both deep and broad.

You seem to be focused on licensing code, I’m quite certain that you could find the libraries to license if you looked. It has been my experience that commercial libs are more trouble then the are worth, however

Lisp is not just about macros. They are great and allow lisp to be extended as the programmer desires. It is also the whole lisp philosophy of building up the language to better suit the application domain.That the language is itself programmable. Lisp being as old as it is predates many of the programming paradigms that are currently in use, such as oop and aspect oriented. But as each new programming method has emerged, lisp has subsumed it. For java to support aspect oriented programming, a whole new language and compiler had to be created. For lisp it is just an add on library. Lisp has been described as the 100 year language. This is because of lisps adaptibility. Can you imagine using Java or C# in fifty years? I have no doubt that lisp will be in active use in fifty years. It may be significantly evolved but it will still be lisp.

Not being a lisper myself, I relied on the authority of the people writing LispSockets who wrote quote: “One of the Great Complaints about Lisp is its lack of standard sockets” unquote. I relied on it to infer that the higher level functions built upon sockets are going to be non-standard and not easily portable … if portability was a goal. Incidentally the project home page talks in terms of future tense, ie. “project will be able to… ” etc. Doesn’t give me much confidence, especially since this is 2006.

I wasn’t very clear in my post about templates and attributed languages. Lisp’s macros rock, but in terms of language tradeoffs, C# and Java are stealing enough ideas from Lisp but Lisp isn’t stealing CLR and Java’s standard library, or third party component library. Take the example of the snazzy kind of charts referred to in the post, is there any way someone running on Lisp could take advantage of these?

As far as templates, C++ templates are reasonable but Java template suck ass. As far are attributes, Lisp syntax is completely extensible. If you really want attributes then add them. There’s one library I know of that makes XML a valid lisp syntax.