I live renoise but feel like no keyboard is a non starter for me. How’s the experience using just the deck controller?

Git and symbolic links still.

Ive heard good things about GNU Stow.

I’ll agree the emacs on ramp is widely regarded as a barrier to entry on CL. I’ve heard good things about the Alive plug-in for vs code though. Also stuff like emacs4cl and portacle in theory make it easier, but I don’t disagree.

With that said, using an editor built on a lisp to work on lisp as its advantages if you can get over that initial hurdle.

Common Lisp!

It can be a little esoteric if you don’t have experience with the paradigms, but I’ve never used a language that felt more free.

On SBCL you have typing support, CLOS provides an OO interface, and it lends itself well to functional style programming (despite not having a type system as powerful as say Haskell). Additionally, the ecosystem is quite stable and mature, any library of functionality you might need is likely available.