Lisp/Scheme interpreter without Emacs?

Question

I\'ve been wanting to teach myself Lisp for a while. However, all the interpreters of which I\'ve heard involve some flavor of emacs. Are there any command line interpreters, s

Answer 1

The most widely used IDE for Common Lisp, particularly in the free software subset of the community, is in fact SLIME, which runs on Emacs. You can use whatever CL compiler you prefer and invoke Lisp source files the way you describe, but if you do that, you won't be taking advantage of many of Lisps dynamic features that are so incredibly useful while developing your application.

I suggest you take a look at this SLIME demonstration video to see what I mean, even though it might be a bit outdated at this point.

If the problem is that you (think you) don't like Emacs, I seriously suggest you try to learn it. Seriously. No, really, I mean that. However, there are alternatives, such as the IDEs provided by commercial Lisp implementations such as Allegro and Lispworks (free trials available), or an Eclipse plug-in called Cusp.