Clojure is almost as big as Common Lisp

[blasdel]

http://arcanesentiment.blogspot.com/2011/04/clojure-is-almost-as-big-as-common-lisp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ArcaneSentiment+%28Arcane+Sentiment%29

[billrobertson42]

Interesting to note, but not really all that informative. An in depth comparison of libraries might be more useful.

[gaius → billrobertson42]

Bigness is relevant, CL advocates still cite the size of its standard library as an advantage:

http://www.lispworks.com/products/myths_and_legends.html

The library is large and supplies several hundred highly flexible functions

How many do you get in a "batteries included" Python, Tcl or Perl? How many in Java or .NET? It may be that the CL ones are "better" but that's subjective...

[hetman]

I think what's more relevant is how well the standard library is designed to stay out of your way. Bloat and size are not always the same thing.

[adambyrtek → hetman]

Preferably staying out of the way by providing the right abstractions. Even a huge library can feel light and flexible if the design encapsulates all the unnecessary details and translates well into the way we think about the problem.

[devin]

So, how about that Common Lisp community spirit?

[nickik]

How big is something like python?

[riffraff → nickik]

I'd say that's possibly a not so interesting comparison, in the sense that python and clojure seem to have quite different name-usage patterns, but some values that may interest you: the size of __builtins_, the basic types and functions would be

    len(__builtins__.__dict__.values()) #=> 143

but then you'd have to consider the methods/attributes on each object

    len(list(chain( *[dir(o) for o in __builtins__.__dict__.values()]))) #=> 4133

but then again, most of these are either the same method that keeps appearing via inheritance, or a different implementation of the same protocol, so you may want to collapse same-named objects

    len(set(chain( *[dir(o) for o in __builtins__.__dict__.values()]))) #=> 250

which added to the names of the first iteration gives you ~400 names, about half of clojure.

But a lot of code in python is in the standard lib even if not loaded as __builtin__, sadly, I'm not sure how to list/load all the standard library in one go.

[regularfry → nickik]

I think that's a valid question. Python aims at "batteries included," so everything you get out of the box when you do a "make install" should count.

With that in mind, I can't think of many that are bigger in terms of coverage.