The advantage to me was having persistent data in memory and stored in the image. I used a function ‘ll’ to reload all source code. I stopped using this techniq

The advantage to me was having persistent data in memory and stored in the image. I used a function ‘ll’ to reload all source code. I stopped using this technique when computers got faster so loading many data sources was not as consuming. Also, for my application I noticed that LispWork’s file IO ran much faster than SBCL so I used LW. Still, working with images in SBCL is a good technique. Command line utilities built as separate image files load very quickly, and then you get to write utilities in Lisp rather than bash or Python.