zuo VS janet

There is more information about the reason for this here^1 Below is an excerpt

> As in Non-recursive Make Considered Harmful: Build Systems at Scale, we can build a better make. This commit mostly imitates Shake as described there, but in a Racket style and called "Zuo" (based on the Chinese word for "make"). The Zuo implementation started at https://github.com/mflatt/zuo, but here it's in the intended long-term home, racket/src/zuo.

> The goal is for Racket to be be just as easy for end-users to build as now after converting scripts from make and /bin/sh to zuo. So, make should work in Racket's top-level directory, and configure plus make plus make install should work in a source directory or distribution, all with no new pre-installed packages required. The new makefiles will be small, however, just ensuring that the zuo executable is built and then handing off to Zuo scripts.

1. https://github.com/racket/racket/pull/4179

Seems like a perfect use-case for Janet. (https://janet-lang.org/) A fast minimal VM like Lua, but even more extensible than Lua by being a "Lisp" with macro and C extension capabilities. Not a true Lisp, it's very pragmatic and performance-oriented. But it keeps the good stuff.

You might be looking for: https://janet-lang.org/

It comes with a build tool `jpm` which installs dependencies globally by default, but you can have it be installed in your project folder as well.

I like Clojure, but I never had any good opportunities to use it other than for a few small hobby projects. It is unfortunate that it is so huge with tons of dependencies and no simpler native implementation. I started looking at various LISPs and Schemes to find something lighter to use instead and ended up settling for Janet that I think is Clojure-like enough to be comfortable to use, but in a small native binary with no dependencies and can be embedded in other native programs. I am sure for big, real, projects that Clojure makes more sense, but for my hobby projects and scripts I do not think I will install it again. I am still happy for the things I learned from learning Clojure. It was a real eye-opener for an old OO-programmer.

https://janet-lang.org/

One might also check out Janet for quick scripting tasks.

https://janet-lang.org

Thanks!

I thought about another multiplatform, homoiconic, highly compact language: https://janet-lang.org/ (takes 803 kb on my machine).

It has no types though.

Racket is great, and if you like it you might find Rash interesting:

https://rash-lang.org/

Janet and Gerbil Scheme are also worth a look:

https://janet-lang.org/

https://cons.io/

Point here is that, for instance Janet language does not have cons / pair type but tuple (and so is lispoid, not lisp), but clearly this is sufficient for macros & hence seamless language construction: all you need is to be a lispoid although being a lisp gives another useful feature.