Getting Started

Guidelines, hints and resources for those who are starting out with Lisp.

Getting Going with Common Lisp

Getting Going with Common Lisp on MacOSX; But I'd advise to use emacsformacosx.com instead of Aquamacs.
Getting Going with Common Lisp on Linux
Getting Going with Common Lisp on Microsoft Windows

and add paredit.el to edit parentheses even more easily.

Getting a Lisp

Alternative ways to download and install a Common Lisp implementation.

Some resources for bootstrapping a useful Lisp environment on various platforms:

Getting started in Common Lisp on Ubuntu
LispWorks Personal for Windows (free trial edition)
Allegro CL Express for Windows (free trial edition)
Lisp Cabinet for Windows packages several Free implementations with Emacs

Books and tutorials

Experienced programmers

Read Peter Seibel's excellent book Practical Common Lisp, available for free online, or in dead-tree form. This is especially a good book for anyone familiar with programming in other languages and wants to learn Lisp for real-world use.

Novice programmers

If you are new to programming in general, these books may be better choices to begin with:

Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation by David S. Touretzky
Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp by David B. Lamkins
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs 2nd Edition (SICP) by Abelson and Sussman (uses Scheme rather than Common Lisp)

IRC channels

There are numerous IRC channels on the Freenode server to help people with Common Lisp.

#clnoobs - A channel devoted specifically for helping Common Lisp newbies get started.
#lispcafe - A more laid-back version of #lisp, used for socialization and banter.
#lispgames - Conversation about writing games in various lisps, mostly Common Lisp.
#lisp - For on-topic technical discussion of lisp programs, issues, and implementations.

There are other channels for discussing other languages such as #clojure or #scheme.

Others

Check out other Lisp books and online tutorials

References

the Common Lisp Hyperspec (CLHS) is a hypertext version of the standard with extensive indexing. Quick symbol lookup in the Hyperspec is available in SLIME.
The Common Lisp Quick Reference is a condensed Common Lisp pocket reference available for free and suitable for printing.
CLtL2 is outdated, but contains more useful descriptions of format and loop than the Hyperspec.

Libraries

Get a tool to Obtain libraries, such as Quicklisp.
Check out the current recommended libraries.

Other hints

Learn about Common Lisp coding conventions and naming conventions.

Cosman246's guide for Setting Up CL

This is for setting up CL, not learning how to use it

Get a working implementation. Preferably SBCL
Get Emacs
Get Quicklisp
Load SBCL from bash
(load "/path/to/quicklisp.lisp")
(quicklisp-quickstart:install)
(ql:add-to-init-file)
(ql:quickload "quicklisp-slime-helper")
If necessary, edit your ~/.emacs and insert the following line:
(setq inferior-lisp-program "sbcl")
where you can substitute the name of the program that invokes your implementation of choice for sbcl

This page is linked from: index Installing OpenMCL on Mac OS X Online Tutorial

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