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> The major releases support things like unicode, networking, packaging, threading, cbindings.

But every implementation does it differently.

> No one is kept up late at night in a quandry over the choice between cython, jython and unladen swallow!

And that's because Unladen Swallow is mostly dead, most libraries are written for CPython first, and if you happen to choose Jython you can always pick a library from the vast pool of Java libraries. With Common Lisp it used to be that every library supported a different subsection of the implementation x operating systems matrix.

> I don't know your point about character encoding or file system access?

Read the standard on pathnames. Versioned filesystems are a blast from the past.

> Here's a link to a web client btw http://weitz.de/drakma/ Weitzware rocks

First time I used it I had problems convincing it to use the right character encoding when downloading pages. The second time I tried it wouldn't compile on SBCL on Mac OS X.

> I guess my basic thesis is that Common Lisp doesn't suck.

It doesn't, I never said it did.




> But every implementation does it differently.

So don't use every implementation. Pick one.

>Read the standard on pathnames. Versioned filesystems are a blast from the past.

I have, what is your point? Most languages use string concatenation for file-system access. How is CL a step backwards from that?

>It doesn't, I never said it did. It was an allusion to a fairly well known post entitled 'why common lisp sucks', which is basically what Dr. Taver is describing.


> So don't use every implementation. Pick one.

But then a library you need doesn't work on the implementation you pick on your operating system, or you want to port to another operating system.




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