Hi,
I've been trying to learn more about how Quicklisp has changed how Common Lisp hackers work. When I posed the question on the Quicklisp list, I got a response from Elliot Slaughter with a point that I hadn't considered before:
I think part of what makes Quicklisp successful (in my opinion) is that both new *and old* Lisp users love and make use of it. To me, it's really magical to be able to cd into my project, start lisp, and quickload it, and have it just work, even if I have customized versions of some of the dependencies. I think the extent to which Quicklisp "just works" but also stays out of the way makes older Lisp hackers happy, which in turn makes the community more vibrant because library and implementation authors are using the same system that new users are being told to use (which wasn't always true with e.g. lisp-starter-pack or asdf-install).
As I suspect the "pro" list likely has more old-timers than newcomers, I'd like to get your take on this idea.
Zach