Foreword
Cookbook, n. a book containing recipes and other information about the preparation and cooking of food.
The Common Lisp Cookbook is a collaborative resource to help you learn Common Lisp the language, and its ecosystem, and to get you started in a wide range of programming areas. It can be used by Lisp newcomers as a tutorial (getting started, functions, etc) and by everybody as a reference (loop!).
We hope that these EPUB and PDF versions make the learning experience even more practical and enjoyable.
Getting started
We’ll begin with presenting easy steps to install a development environment and start a new Common Lisp project.
Want a 2-clicks install? Then get Portacle, a portable and multi-platform Common Lisp environment. It ships Emacs, SBCL (the implementation), Quicklisp (package manager), SLIME (IDE) and Git. It’s the most straightforward way to get going!