To start writing Common Lisp, we will need:
- an implementation of Common Lisp
- a text editor
and ideally
- a way to communicate between our implementation and our editor
Portacle is a good quick-start environment for Common Lisp. It includes the SBCL implementation of Common Lisp, the text editor Emacs, and the Superior Lisp Interation Mode for Emacs known as SLIME.
It also includes Quicklisp, a package management tool for Common Lisp, and Paredit, an Emacs mode which specialized commands for the editing of the Lisp family of languages.
To follow these exercises we recommend installing Portacle.
If you're unfamiliar with Emacs, we've produced a short bootstrap tutorial
If you intend to contribute to this project, or to teach using the exercises, we also recommend a few additions to the Portacle setup.
The examples are evaluated in the same file as they are written; the values are written as comments below the example. Any side effects (i.e. printing to standard out) also appear as comments.
This is taken from the Lispy Emacs package, as described in the add-ons section.