Does not sound like development in Lisp (or Smalltalk). You were using Lisp as a batch language - there are possibly better languages for that.<p>I tend to run my Lisp images for days, weeks, months. As long as possible. Restarting is always an unwelcome interruption of my flow. Working with files is no problem. I have the code in the LispWorks editor in buffers/files and compile incremental from there. Sometimes I recompile a whole buffer and sometimes only parts. A good Lisp environment will also keep track of changed code and have a command to compile only those. Alternatively I compile a buffer and then walk through the compiler warnings fixing the code until the warnings are gone - never leaving the image.