Practical Common Lisp

Why HN readers recommended it

HN remembers it as the memorable explanation of restarts and multiple dispatch, referenced whenever those features come up.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Google TechTalks

Topic

common lisp

Format

talk

Level

intermediate

HN recommenders in dataset

3

HN mentions in dataset

5

Recommendation years in dataset

2011–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• I agree that my macros explanation was stretched. I simplified it too much. Restarts are really nice, I first heard about them in "Practical Common Lisp" google talk: [VIDEO]

• The author provides a good example of legitimate use of change-class with his compiler example. About violating "some earlier architectural plan" in the case of libraries: Being able to do this allows CL programmers to freely mix libraries with different "architectural plans" without resorting to …

• Peter Seibel's talk "Practical Common Lisp"[1] covers that from a different angle, also comparing multiple dispatch with the visitor pattern. [1] [VIDEO]