> it looks like another single-language tool for smuggling code onto a box while failing to set up any interdependencies with the system's package manager. I do

> it looks like another single-language tool for smuggling code onto a box while failing to set up any interdependencies with the system's package manager. I don't like being so harsh, but "every language has its own packages and none of them interop at all" is a growing antipattern that eventually leads to horrible messes. I like that Quicklisp doesn't interoperate with the system package manager (I use Debian and Debian derivatives mostly). Quicklisp sets up repositories per-user, which means I can easily have different versions of libraries running for different users. This is handy because the Unix user facility is the original "virtual machine." All Common Lisp implementations are also very easy to set up to run from your home directory, which is great. I never use apt for installing CL implementations. System packaging is great for command-line and GUI applications, and certain services like databases. But I don't think it works for development, and I don't even think that having machine-wide library installation (like npm and RubyGems) is a good idea. I've used npm and RubyGems and the way Quicklisp does things is much better in my experience (although one thing it doesn't provide is library versioning for individual projects).