Lisp code screening

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During web searching, I found the following comment : Traditional Lisp debugging practices can still be used.

  • What are the traditional debugging practices?
  • Normally, what tools are used for debugging lisp (with/without emacs)?

I don't know what Bill meant specifically, but IME:

Typically your editor will have a running instance connected to it. You can compile functions immediately to insert them into the running image -- since Lisp has its own compiler, you're just telling the running image to read and compile a small section of text. Or you can run functions directly, to see what they do.

When an exception is thrown (or a condition is signaled, if you're lucky enough to be in a dialect with conditions), the debugger will show you the stack trace and let you decide how to continue.

The major difference between Lisp and other high-level compiled languages is that in Lisp you're basically always writing code with the debugger attached.