I wrote this while teaching Common Lisp. It helps in setting up SLIME, Paredit, etc. in Emacs quickly. The section "Line-by-Line Explanation" of the README at https://github.com/susam/emacs4cl#line-by-line-explanation explains every line of the .emacs file.

It provides a middle ground between manually installing SLIME, Paredit, etc. yourself with M-x package-install commands and installing Portacle that hides away the underlying details of what goes into making Emacs ready for Common Lisp development. It promotes a DIY approach to automate customizing Emacs into a Common Lisp programming environment.