alt Hacker NewsI started learning Common Lisp, but ASDF and Quicklisp threw me off. I couldn't tell if you were supposed to choose one or the other or they were used together. This might revive my interest in Common Lisp if I get around to reading it. But in the meantime I drifted off to Racket, which is relatively well documented and has extensive libraries and really unique features.
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The packaging story in common lisp is.... Not great.
It's hamstrung by archaic naming conventions that confuse newcomers. What CL calls a system is roughly analogous to what most other languages call a package. What CL calls a package is what other languages call a namespace.
Despite all that it's a pretty good language if you can find libraries for what you need. The de facto standard implementation (sbcl) has a very good compiler and an acceptable GC. The language itself is expressive and it makes for very quick and pleasant DX. I love writing common lisp.
For anybody who's still confused, the tl;dr is ASDF is the actual package loading mechanism, Quicklisp doubles as an ASDF wrapper and a package manager.