March 12, 2026
Lisp love letters and flamebait
SBCL: A Sanely-Bootstrappable Common Lisp (2008) [pdf]
Old Lisp paper resurfaces; fans cheer, newbies ask “Do people build stuff?”, drama ensues
TLDR: An old paper on SBCL—a Common Lisp that can build itself using other Lisp systems—resurfaced, prompting cheers from veterans and puzzled questions from newcomers. Fans tout active development and real-world ports, while a snarky “compiler-in-Python” quip lights up the age-old language wars.
A 2008 paper on SBCL—an implementation of Common Lisp that can rebuild itself using other Lisp systems—resurfaced, and the comments instantly turned into a nostalgia-fueled rollercoaster. Veterans waved the banner: SBCL is still alive and kicking. One user swore there’s even a fresh proposal for coroutines (fancy cooperative multitasking), proof that this isn’t just museumware.
Then came the spicy. A drive-by Jonathan Blow quote—“It’s about a compiler written in Python FFS”—got dropped in like a smoke bomb, igniting the classic internet mini-drama: language wars, but make it retro. Meanwhile, a newcomer innocently asked, “what is this used for and do people build anything with Lisp???” and suddenly the thread split between seasoned Lispers flexing and curious learners peeking in.
Receipts were produced: a commenter linked to recent chatter on SBCL here and a Nintendo Switch port here. Translation: yes, people ship things; yes, it runs in unexpected places. The tender moment came from a fan who called SBCL “lovely and very well optimized,” confessing they cry when using “modern” tools—equal parts shade and love letter. Verdict from the comments: SBCL is old-school cool, still evolving, and capable of stirring up both admiration and memes.
Key Points
- •SBCL is designed to be bootstrapped from multiple existing Common Lisp implementations rather than purely self-hosted or built from a different language.
- •The paper explains the motivations and technical details of this bootstrapping approach and evaluates its technical and social impacts.
- •Lisp’s history and standardization are outlined, highlighting Scheme and Common Lisp as the most popular dialects with formal standards (and Scheme’s community processes).
- •The focus is on Common Lisp implementation strategies affecting development ease; cross-compilation to other architectures is explicitly out of scope.
- •The paper contrasts image-oriented and source-oriented development, noting Common Lisp’s predominately source-oriented practice and the need to ensure clean builds due to non-standardized, evolving image formats.