ferret VS babashka

Seems like there has been no development since 2020 - https://github.com/nakkaya/ferret

The whole of ferret's source code is in a single org-mode file, following the literate programming style: https://github.com/nakkaya/ferret/blob/master/ferret.org

fyi there's some middle ground via ferret if you want to mix the two in the future. I think janet lang is more full featured, borrowing ideas from clojure while targeting simple embedding alongside c.

Another commenter already mentioned Gambit Scheme. That provides for inline C and therefore very easy interop with external libraries. It still has a runtime and GC though - those might pose a problem depending on your platform and task.

Ferret (https://github.com/nakkaya/ferret) and Carp (https://github.com/carp-lang/Carp) are both Lisp-like low level languages. Both seem to be fairly experimental in nature though.

> anything but C

Taking you literally, Rust and D can both compile for bare metal. D in particular has a "Better C" subset. (https://dlang.org/spec/betterc.html)

In the same vein, Terra is a C like language (manual memory management) that you metaprogram with Lua. (https://github.com/terralang/terra)

Taking you very literally, Forth is also an option.

Impressive. Wonder how the performance in Emacs will be with a file this big... org source file

Check out Babashka. It's a single binary that runs Clojure without a JVM. It also starts up really fast and uses a lot less memory: https://github.com/babashka/babashka

That said, there are reasons you may want to use the JVM Clojure later. It might be interesting to read the replies to another poster with similar concerns about the JVM: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40445415

It also gives you access to Babashka if you want Clojure for other use-cases where start-up time is an issue

https://babashka.org/

I've tried researching this myself and can't find too much. There's this project metaes which is an mci for JS, and there's the SCI module of the Clojure babashka project, but that's about it. I also saw Triska's video on mci but it was pretty theoretical.

Created by the same guy who created babashka which is a way to write bash scripts, node scripts, and even apple scripts using Clojure. A very proficient and influential developer in the Clojure community. This is how borkduke's neil helps us:

Not what you asked for but there is Babashka for scripting in Clojure.

https://github.com/babashka/babashka

Clojure's lazy sequences by default are wonderful ergonomically, but it provides many ways to use strict evaluation if you want to. They aren't really a hassle either. I've been doing Clojure for the last few years and have a few grievances, but overall it's the most coherent, well thought out language I've used and I can't recommend it enough.

There is the issue of startup time with the JVM, but you can also do AOT compilation now so that really isn't a problem. Here are some other cool projects to look at if you're interested:

Malli: https://github.com/metosin/malli

Babashka: https://github.com/babashka/babashka

Clerk: https://github.com/nextjournal/clerk

Being a Clojure addict, I guess I have to leave the obligatory link to Babashka too then: https://github.com/babashka/babashka (Native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting)