Common Lisp implementations do whatever you want. > I'm used to languages like Python, that have a number of files that are modules, and to start a program you

Common Lisp implementations do whatever you want. > I'm used to languages like Python, that have a number of files that are modules, and to start a program you run one of them as an entry point. You can do that. start a Lisp with a file to load at start, it can then load the dependencies. > C programs consist of a lot of files that are compiled and linked into a binary executable. You can do that, too. That's typical when you create a 'system' declaration which describes your software. ASDF would be a tool for that. You then compile the software, load it and dump an image. Some implementations have a more elaborate way to create applications or can create loadable libraries, which you can integrate into other applications. > You build an in-memory state by adding things to it, later dump it to a binary. How do you get an overview of what there is? Typically you would work with files. Write the code in files, evaluate the code from there and build the software from time to time as a whole. If you use SBCL, then you get tons of compile time information, type checks, efficiency hints, warnings, ....