About all this Lisp fuzz
wglb: Speaking of one who has four "distros" in the shop (ubuntu, freebsd, openbsd, osx) each of these has its strength and making our stuff work on them is not a big deal.  I don't get confused at all, and there isn't all that much "noise".Similarly, for the very high performance stuff, i use SBCL which generates native code on all the above platforms.  I recently have started to do CCL because a client wants a true mac app and CCL has this wonderful cocoa bridge.  If i had to do any java stuff or interface with java, I would probably be using clojure.If you are interested, I recommend continuing PCL and the lispbox.If everyone is not moving to fix the problems that you mention, it might mean that they disagree about what the important problems are.Arc exists as a research effort in thinking about what the next version of lisp should look like, and there are those that feel it is a possible answer to some of your questions.Scheme is a very essential (e.g. minimalist) implementation of Lisp that is often found in teaching environments.Don't let the variety scare you--just dive in if you are interested.