Credo

Starting with Lisp is a daunting task. First you download SBCL. Then you check out SBCL from cvs, and use the version you just downloaded to compile a new one. Then you download some flavor of Emacs and install it. Then you download the latest release of Slime. Then you go back and do a cvs checkout of Slime instead, because the last release is nearly two years old. Then you customize your .emacs file so that Slime can hook up to lisp.

Ok, so that was a great big pain, but at long last, you're ready to try out the most advanced language ever! You cross your fingers and fire up Emacs. Behold!

This is the face of the most advanced and powerful language ever? The development environment clearly hasn't taken advantage of any advances in user interface since the 70's. If the development environment hasn't evolved past the command line, can we really expect better of the language?

And what if you don't know how to use Emacs? Now you have two problems. Your early forays into Lisp are going to be frustrating and slow as you struggle just to edit text using a program which acts like no other. This is surely going to taint your perception of the language itself. How many newcomers turn away in disgust at this early stage?

And we haven't even mentioned the library situation yet.

Enter Cusp. Cusp was made with two goals in mind:

• Provide a high quality Lisp IDE with all the amenities that users of modern IDE's have come to expect.
• Ensure that it works straight out of the box.

I may be biased, but so far I think it has fulfilled those goals quite well. But there's always more work to be done. Join us!