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by axelrosen 2727 days ago
Never heard of js-cl, but Parenscript definitely isn't. It's a glorified s-exp notation for javascript. ClojureScript doesn't compile to plain js. It maintains a lot of it's characteristics at run-time. And this is possible because Clojure does something very similar on the JVM. This in turn enables you to write code targeting both platforms without too much effort.

WISP is a little more like the Parenscript of Clojure (though it's written in javascript itself) https://github.com/Gozala/wisp/blob/master/doc/language-esse...
2 comments
fiddlerwoaroof 2727 days ago
js-cl is a (still-partial) Common Lisp implementation in JavaScript. https://github.com/jscl-project/jscl/blob/master/README.md

Parenscript is a bit more than just a glorified s-expression wrapper for JavaScript: it also implements a lot of the core CL macros (defun, let, lambda, etc.) in ways that are close to the CL semantics. It’s limited by the fact that it doesn’t want to have its own runtime: so, while there is some degree of source-level compatibility, it doesn’t have things like restarts and CLOS that would require runtime support (although, there is a library called the Parenscript object system that provides some degree of source compatibility with CLOS.

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axelrosen 2727 days ago
Yea, it looks like js-cl is more like it. You'd want to implement some reasonable subset of CL. And ClojureScript really didn't have to compromise on much, which is why it's been embraced so easily.

Most of the time you just have a .cljc file and pretty much the same exact code just works on both platforms. In a few places you'll use the #? reader macro that lets you do different stuff based on platform, and that's it.

Well, you basically get simple macros for free as long when you have an s-exp based notation for something. Which is why I do in fact like them. Something like Parenscript or Wisp is really great for lightweight websites.

I remember way back around 2010 or 2011 playing around with CL and Parenscript a bit and it looks like the landscape isn't too different today.

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flavio81 2726 days ago
>Parenscript definitely isn't. It's a glorified s-exp notation for javascript.

It is not. Parenscript is a subset of Common Lisp that then gets translated to Js.

ClojureScript is also a subset of Clojure that runs on javascript.

> ClojureScript doesn't compile to plain js

How does it run on a javascript-enabled browser, then?

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axelrosen 2726 days ago
Yes, you could call both of them subsets. But one is so small that for most purposes is incompatible for anything but the simplest uses. While the other lets you run an almost identical codebase on two platforms. There are plenty of people who only ever write ClojureScript and couldn't care less about the JVM Clojure, because it really is that close.

And yes, as other mentioned js-cl is trying to do something similar, and I hope it works out!

Sorry bad wording on my part, was just reiterating the point that Parenscript maps closely to regular looking js, while cljs abuses js quite heavily.

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