The Spring Lisp Game Jam 2024 broke a new record with 48 games submitted last week, giving participants a chance to play each other’s games. Two distinct meta-patterns emerged in how folks approached building games with Lisp, both having broader applications beyond games. Guile emerged on top with the most submissions thanks to Hoot, a Scheme-to-WebAssembly compiler developed at the Spritely Institute. Fennel remained popular, while S7 caught attention. The ‘Icing’ approach embeds Lisp into non-Lisp programs, while the ‘Cake’ approach keeps most of the program in Lisp. Pushing the limits with Lisp adds more flavor to the tech stack, like with Chickadee and Hoot projects aiming to reclaim more parts from C for easier hacking and improved safety. Ultimately, small advances in reclaiming parts of the tech cake from the dominant languages like C is the real excitement for projects like Guix, Trial game engine, and Pre-Scheme. Emphasizing pushing the limits of what Lisp can do, the author proudly labels themselves as a “cake boy” and advocates for rewriting projects in Lisp rather than Rust.
https://dthompson.us/posts/lisp-icing-or-cake.html