You can build your Common Lisp programs from a set of files like any other programming language. "asdf" is the most common system which provides loading complex

You can build your Common Lisp programs from a set of files like any other programming language. "asdf" is the most common system which provides loading complex lisp system. I actually use a makefile to build my Common Lisp based executables from my set of files, no neeed to build up an in-memory state. The difference with Common Lisp is, you are not limited to this build model, but while your whole code is loaded, you can keep redefining functions for development. This creates the minimal cycle of editing and testing any single function in your program. This is a big asset in development, but in no way means you have to build your systems that way. Actually the contrary, I can only recommend to restart your lisp image frequently to ensure the system loads and builds from file rather than depending on the image state.