> why a family of languages should be this dependent on a specific editor... The language isn't, but SLIME is because emacs isn't just an editor, it's a platfo

> why a family of languages should be this dependent on a specific editor... The language isn't, but SLIME is because emacs isn't just an editor, it's a platform and system that people develop applications on top of. And the community was already there, using emacs, to continue with that option.