Lori Holden over at Ghost Opera, Ltd has a nice post with advice for noobs wanting to get started with Common Lisp. As Holden points out, Common Lisp is beautiful and powerful but has some sharp edges and no commonly agreed upon starting point for newcomers.
The post is aimed at getting the neophyte up and running by listing some references and tools and then walking through a (toy) project. For tools she recommends
- Emacs/Slime
- SBCL
- Quicklisp
- CL-Project
- Buildapp and
- ASDF
That seems like a reasonable list, and truth to tell, I use almost that exact set of tools for all my Lisp work. The only difference is that I use Zach Beane’s quickproject instead of cl-project. Part of that is because I discovered quickproject first but it’s also because cl-project uses a method of package management that differs from what I (and, I think, most Lisp programmers) am used to.
The method pushed by cl-project is based on the style recommendations of Ariel Networks, which I find less than compelling. Still, others can and do disagree so it’s worth checking them and cl-project out if you’re inclined. Holden has a direct link to the Ariel style guide so she’s apparently an adherent.
There’s nothing in this post that will be new to anyone who’s the least bit familiar with Common Lisp but if you’re a newcomer and wondering how to get started, this is a valuable post with lots of good information.