Re:Emacs-like editors written in Common Lisp
by gus_massa on Sunday October 02, 2022 @09:13AM
(#33055616)
The original version of DrRacket was written in C, but it has been rewritten in Racket a long time ago. https://github.com/racket/drracket
I use a mix of DrRacket, WinEdt and Geany (with more color in the matched parenthesis).
Clojure is a good choice if the JVM is an option. You get access to the entire Java ecosystem. It’s been years since I’ve worked in Java land, but my understanding is the JVM is pretty fast now too. I like Clojure and it’s the only Lisp I’ve ever been paid to work in. I already knew Java, so my Common Lisp experience made it extremely easy to pick up. If you want to write Lisp professionally it’s not your only choice, but it could be the best.
Scheme is more focused on functional programming. I’ve only ever used it for studying computing science. I don’t know much about Racket, but at a glance it looks like a kind of Scheme++.
As far as I know, GNU Emacs is the most popular editor for all of the above. It’s largely written in Emacs Lisp, but the core and parts where performance is critical are C. Racket does come with its own editor, DrRacket, so maybe Racket users use that? I don’t know if it’s written in Racket but I’d suppose it is.
Incidentally, it’s my understanding that the Nyxt browser team intends to add full editing support at some point. If so, it will be a kind of web focused Emacs, which sounds interesting.