I won't argue, slime, like a lot of emacs tools, are not necessarily the right tool for everybody, at all stage. For very beginners, any editor they're familia

I won't argue, slime, like a lot of emacs tools, are not necessarily the right tool for everybody, at all stage. For very beginners, any editor they're familiar with will do (but if they're beginner, how would they be familiar with any editor? Just start with emacs, it's as simple as any other, click and point etc; you can try it anything you do with Notepad, do exactly the same with emacs and you will get the same results). And indeed, using a CL implementation in the terminal (but with rlwrap if you're use a read-line deficient implementation; clisp has it included), for your first steps can be a better learning experience than using sophisticated GUIs. Just like I wouldn't advise to use Xcode or Visual Studio to a beginner starting to learn C or C++: just edit your code with ed(1), and run { cc -o hw hw.c } in the terminal. Be sure to teach in advanced lessons about the ed(1) command: ! cc -o hw hw.c && ./hw RET like: $ ed hw.lisp hw.lisp: No such file or directory i (defun main () (princ "Hello World!") (terpri)) (main) . w 59 !clisp -norc -q hw.lisp Hello World! ! 1,$n 1 (defun main () 2 (princ "Hello World!") 3 (terpri)) 4 (main) q $ Somebody who lacks this experience, cannot understand the benefits of "IDE" or of emacs and slime. But also, the feature of calling out external programs like a compiler from an editor, exists in any good editor, not just emacs. Only it's emacs it's easier because you can customize it much more. It becomes clear when the newbie will have typed a hundred times: !clisp -l myprogram.lisp -x '(main)' RET Then you introduce him to emacs and slime and he will feel you're Jesus came back to save him.