Hi HNers, I've built a lot of software in Python and Ruby over the years and recently, I've become interested in Lisp but am unsure which Lisp/Scheme variant to learn for building production grade software.
Ideally, I would like to learn the most modern one i.e. robust package management, tooling, ecosystem, etc. Really the main requirement is that I would like to be able to build production ready software with a Lisp that I can use at and for my company.
I've looked into Clojure and like a lot about it, but don't want to have to dig into the Java world. Is there any alternative out there? Any suggestions are appreciated :)
Racket is good but the toolchain and libraries are far behind Clojure. Especially Cider and Cursive are so great, and for libraries, there are a lot of solid ones like Ring/Compojure, interesting things like Duct, Pathom, Fulcro.
Common Lisp is also good, SBCL/Slime is solid, but it has its own idioms, a multiple paradigm Lisp-2 and feels pretty different from Scheme and Clojure. I found single-paradigm languages like Clojure and Scheme are sufficient to do most things already.
Java-world-wise, you don't have to deal with Java most of the time if you don't want to. There are plenty of Clojure libraries which of course follow Clojure idioms.