alt.hn

2/22/2026 at 12:12:39 PM

Cl-kawa: Scheme on Java on Common Lisp

 https://github.com/atgreen/cl-kawa

by varjag

2/25/2026 at 2:08:46 PM

Github user atgreen has a large number of really interesting Common Lisp projects: https://github.com/atgreen

I am a fan.

by mark_l_watson

2/25/2026 at 5:00:05 PM

The newer ones are mostly vibecoded if that matters to you.

by shawn_w

2/25/2026 at 7:11:27 AM

The OpenLDK is very interesting - it looks like it “compiles” to the vintage procedural dialect within CL (eg TAGBODY etc.) I wonder if someone’s ever bypassed the “procedural Lisp” level and just used a CL implementation’s internal assembler interactively, though. (IIRC both SBCL and CCL expose theirs.)

by nxobject

2/25/2026 at 2:56:15 PM

I did that to write simd routines for sbcl: https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/src/code/arm64-simd... Probably the best way of writing assembly, can evaluate the function immediately, use macros and any other code to emit instructions, even can print register values (instruction-level stepping would be even better, but too much work).

by stassats

2/25/2026 at 7:44:59 AM

TAGBODY/GO are broadly used in advanced Lisp macros. If you expand a non-trivial extended LOOP invocation you'd likely see some.

If you compile to an implemenation's assembler (even where that possible) you don't really compile into Lisp anymore. And really the Lisp compiler is going to do a better job at generating machine code.

by varjag

2/25/2026 at 11:12:45 AM

If you are interested in this, you might also be interested to learn that I also got clojure running on SBCL via OpenLDK. See https://github.com/atgreen/cl-clojure.

Regarding LLM-usage, the bulk of OpenLDK was written without the use of LLMs. But recently I let Claude loose on the code to fix a few remaining problems blocking kawa. Claude also upleveled the Java support from Java 8 to Java 21.

I wrote a couple of blog entries related to this work that might be of interest. One was around how I had to use the MOP to optimize method dispatch in CLOS for clojure: https://atgreen.github.io/repl-yell/posts/clos-mop-dispatch/

by atgreen

2/25/2026 at 1:10:55 PM

I had to check if the creator is Polish, as "ciekawa" means "interesting". But apparently, just a coincidence.

by stared

2/25/2026 at 2:03:45 PM

Coincidentally, Chi-kawa is a very popular anime character in Japan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiikawa

It's a portmanteau of "Chiisai" (small) and "Kawaii" (cute).

by cloudbonsai

2/25/2026 at 3:42:49 PM

Well, GNU Kawa is named after the Polish word for coffee (going with a play on Java rather than a play on Scheme like Guile and Larceny EDIT: and Gambit went with).

by tmtvl

2/25/2026 at 7:08:36 AM

I haven't tried it, but the description sounds delightfully perverse. And an LLM (Claude) cannot be embarrassed by perverting Lisp/Scheme with Java.

by zombot

2/25/2026 at 8:11:25 AM

Why should it?

"We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." -- Guy Steele

by pjmlp

2/25/2026 at 9:16:23 AM

RMS itself being a diehard Scheme and Elisp user said that he found Java elegant over C. This was OFC long before Go and when C++ was king in the 90's.

On Java itself, when CLOS, a dog-ancient system for Common Lisp it's enough to support the Java class/method/object system by itself tells a lot on how great CL can be, even with SBCL which is the top tier free (as in freedom) interpreter/compiler out there.

On performance, well, who knows; remember that PyPy itself back in the day was written in Python itself and it ran things much faster than the vanilla Python interpreter.

by anthk

2/25/2026 at 1:31:17 PM

JVM, not Java. And there's Clojure already in that space.

by brazzy

2/25/2026 at 9:15:12 AM

The Computer Abstractions book/course for Scheme had some kind of VM written in Java where you had to write an assembler in Scheme as the final 'biggie' project.

by anthk

2/25/2026 at 12:18:42 PM

Perhaps someone could port Arc to Kawa! Then the whole contraption could run HN on SBCL in a roundabout way.

by varjag

2/25/2026 at 9:18:35 AM

On OpenLDK, if it's able to run something like SweetHome3D at usable speeds I would consider it a success and an interesting exercise.

by anthk

2/25/2026 at 7:35:08 AM

And? Do you want a medal for plagiarizing other people's work?

by rhkalth

2/25/2026 at 4:34:06 PM

I'll bite. What have they plagiarized?

by klez