Lispfriendly

Lispfriendly is a term used in software development to describe projects, libraries, or language ecosystems that aim to be especially welcoming to Lisp programmers. It may refer to a specific project named Lispfriendly, but more often it denotes an approach that preserves Lisp ergonomics—such as native handling of S-expressions, a powerful macro system, and interactive development with a Read-Eval-Print Loop (REPL).

Core in Lispfriendly design are features that reduce friction for Lisp work: homoiconicity or Lisp-compatible syntax; macros that enable code as data and vice versa; strong tooling for code navigation and transformation; and structural editing that respects balanced parentheses. Editor support, including Paredit-style navigation and Lisp-aware refactoring, is commonly highlighted as part of the Lispfriendly experience.

In practice, Lispfriendly can apply to language hosts that embed Lisp-like DSLs, libraries that expose Lisp-like APIs, or languages that adopt Lisp-inspired macro capabilities. Established Lisp family languages such as Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, and Emacs Lisp are typical benchmarks; many non-Lisp languages seek Lispfriendly traits by offering s-expression configuration, extension points, or macro-like templating.

The term remains informal and descriptive rather than a formal standard. It is used by developers to signal a design goal or marketing position rather than an official specification, and it is often invoked in discussions about editor tooling, language extensibility, and developer ergonomics.