My binary with dozens of dependencies (the compiler, the debugger, a web server and all that's required for a web app) is ±30MB, it starts up in 0.40s. The non-compressed binary weighs 120MB and starts in 0.02s.

> Managing and versioning dependencies is very difficult.

You can use Qlot and CLPM these days.

Alexander of 40ants made a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLkqYVTqM38 (with english subs)

There are alternative implementations, like ECL, which is capable of transpiling to C and producing small binaries and dylibs. Then there are implementations like CCL, which have low memory footprint (a freshly booted image consumes ~6.8 MB RAM on my Mac). Lastly, there are commercial implementations like LispWorks and Allegro CL which offer tree-shaking, unlike all other implementations.

ECL for example is called "Embeddable Common Lisp". https://ecl.common-lisp.dev/

ABCL is embeddable into Java.

LispWorks and Allegro CL can compile to shared libraries, which are embeddable.

SBCL, OTOH was not developed with the goal to be embeddable.

there are also many other subsets of common lisp you can use for various things that require a small memory footprint

i also want to know what does Janet bring to the table that a Scheme like a Gerbil [1] does not?

[0] https://ulisp.com

[1] https://cons.io