Emacs Starter Kits for Common Lisp
- Emacs4CL: A do-it-yourself kit to set up Common Lisp development environment with SBCL, Emacs, Slime, Paredit, Rainbow Delimiters and Quicklisp. Provides a step-by-step guide and a line-by-line explanation of every line of code that goes into ~/.emacs.d/init.el (or ~/.emacs) to turn vanilla Emacs into a Common Lisp development environment.
- Portacle: Portacle is a complete IDE for Common Lisp that you can take with you on a USB stick. It is multi-platform and can be run on Windows, OS X, and Linux. Since it does not require any complicated installation process, it is set up and running in no time.
Non-Emacs Starter Kits
- CLOG-Win64-ez - unzip and double click setup.bat - complete Windows Common Lisp (sbcl) environment using CLOG Builder (a full featured Lisp IDE and also a GUI Builder for CLOG)
More Setup Guides
- Common Lisp on Mac OS X
- Common Lisp on Linux
- Common Lisp on Microsoft Windows
- Common Lisp on Android Termux
- Also add paredit.el, Parinfer and/or another plugin to edit parentheses even more easily.
Non-Emacs Guides
Getting a Lisp
Alternative ways to download and install a Common Lisp implementation. Some resources for bootstrapping a useful Lisp environment on various platforms:
- LispWorks Personal for Windows (free trial edition)
- Allegro CL Express for Windows (free trial edition)
- Lisp Cabinet for Windows packages several Free implementations with Emacs
Books and tutorials
Experienced programmers
Read Peter Seibel's excellent book Practical Common Lisp, available for free online, or in dead-tree form. This is especially a good book for anyone familiar with programming in other languages and wants to learn Lisp for real-world use.
Novice programmers
If you are new to programming in general, these books/tutorials may be better choices to begin with:
- Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation by David S. Touretzky
- Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp by David B. Lamkins
- Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs 2nd Edition (SICP) by Abelson and Sussman (uses Scheme rather than Common Lisp)
- Common Lisp Cookbook
Other Online Tutorials.
IRC channels
There are numerous IRC channels on the Libera Chat server to help people with Common Lisp.
- #clschool - A channel devoted specifically for helping Common Lisp newbies get started.
- #lispcafe - A more laid-back version of #lisp, used for socialization and banter.
- #lispgames - Conversation about writing games in various lisps, mostly Common Lisp.
- #lispweb - Conversation about writing web applications in Common Lisp.
- #lisp - For on-topic technical discussion of lisp programs, issues, and implementations.
There are other channels for discussing other languages such as:
Others
Check out other Lisp books and online tutorials
References
- the Common Lisp Hyperspec (CLHS) is a hypertext version of the standard with extensive indexing. Quick symbol lookup in the Hyperspec is available in SLIME.
- The Common Lisp Quick Reference is a condensed Common Lisp pocket reference available for free and suitable for printing.
- CLtL2 is outdated, but contains more useful descriptions of format and loop than the Hyperspec.
Libraries
- Get a tool to Obtain libraries, such as Quicklisp.
- Check out the current recommended libraries.
- Check out the awesome-cl list
- as well as lisp-lang.org's recommended libraries
Other hints
Learn about Common Lisp coding conventions and naming conventions.