Your observation about platforms is spot on IMO. This is something that I want to work on - making Common Lisp a platform. Having libraries that provide system

Your observation about platforms is spot on IMO. This is something that I want to work on - making Common Lisp a platform. Having libraries that provide system programming features and work across a wide range of implementations is the first step. CL is underspecified in terms of a lot of systems programming stuff. The #1 priority in this space is integration with the Unix shell - scripting, having executables, stdin and out, command-line arguments. Not really any good libraries that combine all this into one thing that works well everywhere. The second big thing is packaging and distribution - Quicklisp addresses that well. Next step beyond making Quicklisp better is a script for Linux that finds the Common Lisp implementation on your system (and installs one if not present), and loads whatever software you need - essentially a common installer for CL applications that bootstraps off of Quicklisp. About other languages on Common Lisp, there is actually a large number: http://www.cliki.net/programming%20language http://www.cliki.net/programming%20language A lot of languages have been ported to run on various Scheme (Racket and Gambit) implementations.