3. What is Common Lisp?

Common Lisp is a general-purpose programming language, the modern and most prominent descendant (along with Clojure and Scheme) of the Lisp family. It is a compiled, high-performance language, standardized by ANSI (its definitive version was published in 1994).

Despite being a language heavily influenced by the functional paradigm, it is flexible and has excellent support for object-oriented programming. It also stands out for its runtime environment, which allows you to modify and debug running applications. Ideal for interactive development or critical software where availability is crucial.

Lisp languages are known for their list-based syntax and their powerful macro system, which allows developers to create new language constructs or extend the functionality of the language. Once you learn the syntax, it is relatively easy to jump to other languages such as Clojure, Scheme, Racket, Emacs Lisp, PicoLisp, and others, since they share many features and concepts.