# Quicklisp

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Quicklisp and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Common Lisp's de facto package manager; people recommend it for library access, though it lacks HTTPS and signature checks.

## Why people recommend it

- De facto standard for Common Lisp (3 comments): "Quicklisp is great and I recommend using it along with a brief introduction" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226960)) "Quicklisp is great, it's the defacto standard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226485)) "uv is the ‘Quicklisp for Python.’" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49510036))

## What people warn about

- No HTTPS or signature checking (2 comments): "Quicklisp still doesn't support HTTPS, which is apparently also necessary to do signature check." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46230023)) "also didn’t support https and doesn’t do any signature checking" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46226576))
- Installation is not easy (2 comments): "figure out how to install and setup a Lisp implementation and quicklisp" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47906657)) "it's not the easiest thing to install" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229813))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Nix](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nix.md): 378 recommend
- [Homebrew](https://hackerapproved.com/p/homebrew.md): 271 recommend
- [npm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/npm.md): 161 recommend
- [pnpm](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pnpm.md): 124 recommend
- [Cargo](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cargo.md): 123 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Quicklisp", https://hackerapproved.com/p/quicklisp/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).