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The title of this post should be changed to "Armed Bear Common Lisp - Common Lisp on the JVM." It's an iconic name, and then people would actually know what the post title was referring to.


Is it so iconic? I've always referred to it as ABCL.

Seems like we've had about 60 posts as Armed Bear: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

and 200 as ABCL: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...


I believed so, but I guess that the numbers don't lie.


I guessed it was Aluminium Bank Common Lisp, some kind of lightweight version of Steel Bank Common Lisp.


That's actually a nice pun with a good explanation, while Armed Bear only raises questions for me. What kind of weapon would you arm a bear with? Why? Aren't bears unassailable enough as it is?


Bears are most commonly armed with 87.6 mm artillery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(bear)

It seems it's the author's brand name for software, and is a pun on the US constitution's second amendment:

http://armedbear-j.sourceforge.net/

We may thus infer that you would arm bears because of the threat of armed bears. After all, to stop a bad bear with a gun, it takes a good bear with a gun.


Note that the first edition of Common Lisp the Language is the 'Aluminum Book'.


It’s pedantic, but I do agree.

Ahh, HN - never change. Sorry I mean, Hacker News - never change. :)




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