Robert Goldman writes:
Similarly, I would prefer to have ASDF not fall into the SLIME trap. SLIME configuration seems to involve mastering an ever-changing number of contribs to get the features you really want....
Slime is not a good example of a contrib system for various reasons. Though it depends on what you see in a contrib system: I think it's an axis between not-officially-maintained addon code base and plugin architecture. Slime is very far on the left side. I suggest trying to get to the right side because it means that you really have to try to get layers right.
-T.