Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

GDSL is a minimal programming language consisting of an 800-line kernel that includes a 500-line Lisp subset and a 1300-line C subset. It is designed for developers interested in compact language implementations and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1LW
   Lisp with GC in 436 Bytes▲513

   2021 · justine.lol · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Lisp with copying GC in 537 lines of C (plus Lisp 1.5 on top)▲152

   Moved to Forgejo! Contribute to krig/LISP development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Minimal Lisp in ~70 lines of Haskell▲76

   GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

   2011 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4SN
   SectorLISP now fits in one sector▲323

   2021 · justine.lol · its alternatives →

5. 5CD
   Clojure DSL for pattern-matching, parsing and generic programming▲204

   2012 · scattered-thoughts.net · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Lisp in C#▲144

   a custom Lisp. Contribute to codr7/sharpl development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   A Lispy Calculator in under 50 Lines of OCaml▲15

   2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Kent Dybvig's Scheme Machine in 400 Lines of C (Heap-Memory Model)▲226

   Heap based scheme machine. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

   2025 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9FF
   Fully-featured Nil interpreter in less than 1 line of JavaScript▲115

   2013 · ajf.me · its alternatives →

10. 10
    G-Fu – a pragmatic Lisp embedded in Go▲123

    Lisp 2 Go. Contribute to codr7/g-fu development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Tiny Lisp (based on pg’s roots of Lisp) in caml▲11

    An absurdly tiny Lisp interpreter in OCaml. Contribute to afeinberg/ocaml-tinylisp development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

12. 12CV
    CFR[]: Very minimal drawing language with 5 commands: C, F, R, [, ]▲176

    2023 · susam.net · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Lisp implementation in modern Java, Go, C#, TypeScript, Python▲128

    A lisp rosetta stone to demonstrate modern language features - eatonphil/lisp-rosetta-stone

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    a minimal Lisp with closures, macros and gc in 1400 lines of C▲11

    KISS My Lisp - an implementation in pure C99 of a minimal Lisp language. - kototama/kml

    2012 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Snigl – Forth with Lisp in C▲87

    2019 · gitlab.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    Interactive Common Lisp: An Enhanced REPL▲101

    I created this because sometimes I want more than rlwrap but less than emacs. icl aims to hit that middle sweet spot. It's a terminal application with context-aware auto-complete, an interactive object inspector, auto-indentation, syntax colouring, persistent history, and much more. It uses sly to communicate with the child lisp process and aims to be compatible with any sly-supporting implementation. I hope others find it useful!

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17RL
    Risp – Lisp in Rust▲314

    Read Essays by Stepan Parunashvili

    2019 · m.stopa.io · its alternatives →

18. 18MB
    My book, The Common Lisp Condition System▲177

    2020 · amazon.com · its alternatives →

19. 19IW
    I wrote a technical history book on Lisp▲252

    The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…

    Feb 2026 · berksoft.ca · its alternatives →

20. 20
    L2: An elegant untyped, unsafe, unhygienic programming language▲83

    A minimalist type-inferred programming language with procedural macro support - murisi/L2

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    AGL a toy language that compiles to Go▲83

    I spent the past 2 weeks making this toy programming language. I basically forked the Go scanner/parser, and changed the syntax to have functions return a single value. This enable proper Result/Option type to be used as well as propagating errors with an operator. I also wanted to have short "type inferred" anonymous functions to be able to use functions like Map/Reduce/Filter, without having to use 100 characters to specify the types.

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

22. 22
    Rust but Lisp▲218

    Rust but LISP. Contribute to ThatXliner/rust-but-lisp development by creating an account on GitHub.

    May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    A compiler and VM for a simple language, in 150 lines of code▲200

    A complete compiler for a simple language (in less than 150 LoC) - 00_readme.md

    2022 · gist.github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    micro-gl▲101

    Run vector graphics on any computer (without GPU or FPU)

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →