I’ve always been curious about trying different lisp/scheme implementations (will write about that someday).
One of these has been Allegro Common Lisp. It’s old, it’s stable, it’s maintained, it’s at the foundation of “AllegroGraph”.
But until recently, I wouldn’t call it “usable on a MacBook”.
The earlier versions were in theory … but they threw up this fugly Gtk-with-XWindows-in-OSX interface that was a non-starter.
Then, they pivoted to an optional “in-browser” experience, where the whole interface was re-implemented (client-side JS!), which was an admirable effort.
I tried it out last year when it came out, but it was slow and laggy, and I gave up.
This year though, they went all in on that approach, and I’m happy to say it … works!.
Here’s what it looks like, in Safari, when I start their freemium (“Express”) version:
Not as nifty as Lispworks, but pretty good, you can work in this.
So, happy hacking, if you go this route.