Alternatives

Products that do what Kent Dybvig's Scheme Machine in 400 Lines of C (Heap-Memory Model) does

1LW
Lisp with GC in 436 Bytes▲513
2021 · justine.lol
2MM
Micro-mitten – Research language with compile-time memory management▲236
I've been working on implementing the compile-time approach to memory management described in this thesis (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-908.pdf) for some time now - some of the performance results look promising! (Although some less so...) I think it would be great to see this taken further and built into a more complete functional language.
2020 · github.com
3IW
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
4AH
A hash array-mapped trie implementation in C▲171
Long-simmering side project that is finally ready to see the light. HAMTs are a cool persistent data structure and implementing one has been a lot of fun. Beyond the code, there is likely some value in the extensive and largely complete implementation docs; basic benchmarks are linked in the README, too. Kind of aiming to be "the libavl for HAMTs". That is obviously a high and aspirational bar but a distinct possibility if it stirs up a little interest and/or contribution. Anyways, it's time for this to go out, collect feedback and maybe even some use outside of toy projects. Let me…
2023 · github.com
5YA
Yet another memory system for LLMs▲165
Built this for my LLM workflows - needed searchable, persistent memory that wouldn't blow up storage costs. I also wanted to use it locally for my research. It's a content-addressed storage system with block-level deduplication (saves 30-40% on typical codebases). I have integrated the CLI tool into most of my workflows in Zed, Claude Code, and Cursor, and I provide the prompt I'm currently using in the repo. The project is in C++ and the build system is rough around the edges but is tested on macOS and Ubuntu 24.04.
2025 · github.com
6AC
A compiler and VM for a simple language, in 150 lines of code▲200
2022 · gist.github.com
7GI
Going into freshman year, figured I should build an interpreter▲138
Hi all! I'm going into my freshman year, and figured that the best way to prepare for the intro to programming Racket course would be to implement my own garbage-collected, dynamically typed, functional programming language in C ;) Anyways... here's the repo: https://github.com/liam-ilan/crumb I started learning C over the summer, so I still have a whole lot to learn... Any feedback would be greatly appreciated! :D
2023
8TV
Tiny-vLLM – high performance LLM inference engine in C++ and CUDA▲205
May 2026 · github.com
9PA
"Programming Algorithms in Lisp” Book▲232
2021 · apress.com
10HE
Heap Explorer▲73
I wrote a little LD_PRELOAD library that makes it easy to inspect and interact with a running program's glibc heap. It's fun to pause processes, free a bunch of their allocations, then resume them. Most of the time, the processes continue as though nothing happened, but sometimes they do interesting things :)
2025 · github.com
11L8
Lambda-8cc – An x86 C compiler written in untyped lambda calculus▲249
2022 · github.com
12HT
How to write a tiny compiler▲224
2017 · blog.klipse.tech
13AP
A Python with Hindley-Milner-like type annotations, compiling to C▲134
2015 · github.com
14SL
Scheme-langserver – Digest incomplete code with static analysis▲52
Scheme-langserver digest incomplete Scheme code to serve real-world programming requirements, including goto-definition, auto-completion, type inference and such many LSP-defined language feature supports. And this project is based here(https://github.com/ufo5260987423/scheme-langserver). I built it because I was tired of Scheme/Lisp's raggy development environment, especially of the lack of IDE-like highly customized programing experience. Though DrRacket and many REPL-based counterparts have don't much, following general cases aren't reach same-level as in other…
Feb 2026 · github.com
15LI
Lisp implementation in modern Java, Go, C#, TypeScript, Python▲128
2021 · github.com
16SH
ShivyC – Hobby C compiler created in Python▲120
2018 · github.com
17AD
A dbg(...) macro for C++▲162
2019 · github.com
18CU
Compiler using Lisp’s macro system for metaprogramming C-like languages▲80
2018 · github.com
19ID
I designed a language for code golf, compiling to Common Lisp▲102
2013 · rhoscript.com
20AC
A compiler for a small language into x86-64 assembly▲74
2020 · github.com
21EL
Explore large language models with 512MB of RAM▲138
2023 · github.com
22N
Nibble▲102
An attempt at a single pass LLVM frontend in ~3000 lines of C without external dependencies, malloc, or an AST. Included are some graphical examples. The IR isn't perfect, and the README touches on one particular downfall
May 2026 · github.com
23IW
I wrote a scheme interpreter in C▲7
2019 · rain-1.github.io
24G8
GDSL – 800 line kernel: Lisp subset in 500, C subset in 1300▲89
Mar 2026 · firthemouse.github.io

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