[heisig]

I use Common Lisp for most of my daily programming, and SBCL is a big reason why. Once you get over the initial hassle (getting used to the Emacs+SLIME tool chain and learning to read the compiler diagnostics) it really gives you the productivity of Python with the performance of C++. And a lot of that performance is thanks to the tireless effort of the SBCL developers, who have been churning out a new release every few months for the last decades.

Kudos to all SBCL contributors!

[watermelon59]

Do you mind sharing in what space you work on? Just curious about where Common Lisp finds professional usage. It's not something you see every day.

Also, do you have any tips on landing a Common Lisp job for someone who's already in the middle of their career (30s, senior dev)?

[heisig]

I work in academia. My research is about new concepts for parallel programming, especially via runtime optimization and JIT compilation. It was not hard to convince others to use Common Lisp for this - there aren't many languages that allow for metaprogramming at run time. And of these languages, Common Lisp is the only one with decent performance.

As for landing a job outside of academia - my advice would be to attend some of the regular Lisp meetings (See http://planet.lisp.org/, or https://european-lisp-symposium.org/). There is usually some recruiting going on at these meetings. And even if not, you might meet fellow hackers that know about job opportunities.

[pjmlp]

Not the OP, but if you feel like moving into Lisbon,

https://www.siscog.pt/en/

https://franz.com/success/customer_apps/scheduling/siscog.lh...

[vindarel]

This is attractive :) No offer mention Lisp though? found https://www.siscog.pt/en/careers/software-engineer-lisbon-re...

[pjmlp]

It is been a while, so I don't have any more contacts there, yet one might apply and find out.

[watermelon59]

Oh hey, that sounds interesting and I already speak the local language :)