My experience wasn't a smooth sailing either, but I want to say to readers that stuff is probably better today: "getting a database connection set up was pulli

My experience wasn't a smooth sailing either, but I want to say to readers that stuff is probably better today: "getting a database connection set up was pulling teeth." => https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/databases.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/databases.html Use cl-dbi (connection layer) or Mito (light ORM) and do: (mito:connect-toplevel :sqlite3 :database-name "myapp") ;; also mysql and postgres "having dozens of implementations hard to cope with" => you don't have to cope with so many, or any at all. Use one implementation if it suits you well. "develop well on Windows" => SBCL works fine as of today. "extremely difficult to work with CL outside of Emacs" => solved or being solved. See the plugins for Vim, Atom, Sublime, VSCode, Jupyter, Geany… and more. Also Portacle (a portable Emacs for CL), the Lem editor, the free LispWorks IDE… https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.html https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/editor-support.ht... "a better package manager" => Quicklisp is great (easy to use, easy smoothing) but with shortcomings. See CLPM, the Ultralisp distribution, Qlot. "lots of support." there's room for anybody I guess: pro support (LispWorks, Allegro…), helpful community (reddit, Discord, pro mailing list…)