Failing that, true support for out-of-the-box with Visual Studio Code would be nice. Yes, I know about Alive and that... what I mean is, you open up a Lisp file and it asks to download the LSP for Lisp, Alive, and other support extensions.
Maybe LispWorks and Allegro Common Lisp should be less ignored, or have more FOSS friendly licenses, but that is all.
I might also copy some of the article’s .emacs file and try it.
The barrier to entry is not the IDE, its that Lisp is not fashionable at the moment. Those who know how to use it, put their head down and do the work, those who dont will follow the next fashionable trend for their work that they see their employment needing.
Common Lisp will probably never be the next Python, but it might be the next Ruby.
The number of new Lisp users in 2023 is pretty small, sure. But it's frickin' 2023, those users need a better onboarding experience than having to futz with Emacs, even given something like Portacle. They will be familiar with VSCode or one of the above IDEs, not Emacs, and they shouldn't have to entirely relearn how to write code.
Funny, the years spent onboarding Emacs, and GNU/Linux for that matter, was the experience I was looking for.I never wanted to be just another cog in a well lubed task grinding machine.
>they shouldn't have to entirely relearn how to write code
If you are referring to elisp, it really isn't a mountain to climb or anything like that. Besides, only very basic lisp knowledge is required to customize Emacs, after that you can code your day away in a lisp of your choosing.
If you are looking for a more modern experience with emacs try elgot + tree-sitter [1]