newLISP Fan Club

Well this is pretty incredible, kudos to the author https://github.com/kimtg !

Wishing this project success!

Looks pretty cool! I'm trying to figure out why it needs a GC though, I thought newLISP didn't need that because of ORO?

Cool, thanks for sharing @Yael! As these seem pretty obscure I think it'd help to link directly to them.

That's a lovely story thanks for sharing oofoe!

One of the things that I really appreciate about newLISP is the design of the function names themselves. The API just makes sense, English-wise, more so than any other Lisp. I think it has to do with Lutz's background in psychology.

That said, I personally like Janet's use of square brackets, braces, etc. for distinguishing different data structures. It helps break up what otherwise would be a very monotonous looking syntax. I definitely am not a fan of "lots of syntax", but having nothing but parenthesis everywhere can make it hard to notice the datastructures vs functions vs whatever else. I think Janet picked a fairly good sweet spot.

And the lack of lists is interesting, true. However, for all intents an purposes arrays are sufficient and performance-wise faster. Same with real hashtables, which newLISP doesn't have.

Hey folks, as you might've noticed, it appears newLISP is, unfortunately, no longer with us.

The main website has been down for many months now. I haven't heard anything from Lutz. I'm not sure if he's with us either.

What Lutz created will always have a special place in my heart. I've loved this language so much, and I've used it for so many personal projects.

It's such a simple, beautiful language, that it saddens me to see its story come to what appears to be an end.

However, all is not lost.

Lately, I've been exploring Janet.

This lisp-like language is also incredibly well designed. Like newLISP, it too is batteries-included in a tiny single-binary.

However, the similarities end there. Janet is a significantly more sophisticated language. In many ways it is better designed than newLISP and much more modern. It has real garbage collection, lexical closures, special syntax for non-list data structures, a sophisticated fibers-based runtime with support for real threads, a real module system, and more!

Yes, it is a bit more complicated than newLISP, and newLISP's simplicity is a significant part of its appeal. However, there really are no better options AFAICT, and we small-language communities need to stick together!

I encourage newLISPers to have a look at Janet, and consider migrating their code over using LLMs as helpful assistants. That's what I've been doing and it excites me once again to learn a new language.

newLISP, we love you, we're sad to see you go.

Thank you for all of your work, Lutz!

You've forever set an example of the power of simplicity, and the power of Lisp.

EDIT: some docs for learning Janet:

• https://janet.guide/
• https://janet-lang.org/docs/index.html

That project seems relatively unknown and abandoned afaict

I'd love to see some improvements to interacting with CLI programs. It's been a long time since I've done this but I remember that newLISP had issues when it came to managing the input / output of running programs, especially when combining piping data in to the program and getting data back out from both stdout and stderr, and handling errors.

Quote from: ufko on November 16, 2025, 09:53:32 AMI believe Rebel v1.0 is currently the most stable incarnation of the newLISP codebase.

That's awesome. Following 

Woah this is awesome! Congrats Ufko! I'm excited to see where this goes, please keep us posted of updates!

Yeah same here, parenthesis make everything easy to understand for me, I honestly don't get why anyone hates them.

Nice!

I think experiments that people want to put effort into are worth trying. 👍

When I asked Lutz this question he got back to me with a link to the same repo @iacore posted: https://github.com/kosh04/newlisp

So I guess maybe that's where people should look to send PRs? But I see nobody seems to be maintaining it, and it seems to be setup more as a mirror.

It's back up!