SICP is written for Scheme, not Common Lisp, so that might've been your issue. They're not at all the same, despite both being Lisps. Just use Common Lisp. I

SICP is written for Scheme, not Common Lisp, so that might've been your issue. They're not at all the same, despite both being Lisps. Just use Common Lisp. I use SBCL. Read Practical Common Lisp [1] &/ ANSI Common Lisp [2]. Skim the CLQR [3]. If you're just starting out, you can get away with just using the REPL. You might get that ^]]A crap when you up-arrow to previous expressions, so install rlwrap and run 'rlwrap sbcl' instead of just 'sbcl'. Once you get tired of that and want to use an editor, get Emacs (on OS X: see [4], on Ubuntu: apt-get install emacs24). Install SLIME [5] through package-install to send expressions down from a .lisp file to the REPL (with C-x C-e). If you get stuck, try looking for youtube videos (or add an email to your HN about). [1] http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ [2] http://www.paulgraham.com/acl.html http://www.paulgraham.com/acl.html [3] http://clqr.boundp.org/download.html http://clqr.boundp.org/download.html [4] https://emacsformacosx.com/ https://emacsformacosx.com/ [5] https://github.com/slime/slime https://github.com/slime/slime