> - choosing an implementation is a research project (clisp? sbcl? allegro?) - documentation is weaker - libraries are harder to find and install (ASDF vs Rubyg

> - choosing an implementation is a research project (clisp? sbcl? allegro?) - documentation is weaker - libraries are harder to find and install (ASDF vs Rubygems, Python eggs, etc.) - emacs/slime is an investment to learn - examples are few and far between - the language itself (the words, not the punctuation) is inelegant (mapcar, setq, cdadr) - Exactly. Last year I started reading about Lisp etc, and wanted to play with it a little bit. These are the exact same obstacles I faced. If you ask about "IDEs" for Lisp, you're met with downright hostility for not embracing the glory of emacs with open arms - anything else is just unfathomable. Well, what if I'd like to just, you know, start using the language, and not learn a whole new world of an editor first? "Why does emacs + SLIME have to be the only viable option?" That's not a question you can ask, of course, but the answer would be something like "roll your own" anytime you need anything. (Oh, and Xach is a prick. He and Krysztov(or whatever) are practically high-fiving each other on IRC every time they alienate another new would-be Lisper) As for the implementation research, I sort of came to the conclusion that SBCL was the way to go, but documentation (for anything?) was pretty scarce, and ASDF feels like an obstacle too. Later on, I realized that Scheme is more elegant as a language, but it's more or less in the same situation as CL. Compared to these two, something like Python feels much more accessible to me (being a novice at all), because I get the feeling that I can just start using things whenever I want to make that effort. But that's just it - with Python, there's only the effort of learning the language as you use it. You learn the standard library as you go, and suddenly you notice you've accomplished a lot of things and had fun while at it. - At least that's how I imagine it will be when I get around to working on my own super-secret web-startupy project. With Lisps, you need to make a lot of effort just to get to the beginning, and that's a big problem.