Common Lisp's interactive features spark LLM coding debate
What happened
On October 6 a Hacker News thread asked whether Common Lisp is the best language for coding right now. The argument: LLMs write code fast, so the bottleneck has moved to verifying it, and Common Lisp's image-based runtime lets you swap a function without restarting, shortening the feedback loop. When code breaks, the debugger opens with the full call stack and variables, which an LLM can use to fix and resume. The author says his Common Lisp app is six to seven times shorter than the Python version, and less code saves tokens and fits context windows more easily.
Written by AI from the coverage · updated 2 hours ago
Coverage
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- Hacker News front pageWhy Common Lisp is now the best programming language
有观点认为，LLM 写代码极快，瓶颈已从写代码变成验证代码，而 Common Lisp 的 image-based 特性让函数可即时替换、无需重启，反馈循环几乎不存在。其程序出错不崩溃而是打开带完整栈和变量的调试器，LLM 可直接据此修复并恢复运行。作者称自己用 Common Lisp 写的应用比 Python 版本短约六到七倍，代码更少意味着 token 更省、更易放进上下文窗口。
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