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by fiddlerwoaroof 2666 days ago
This book is sort of a trap because some of the macros it defines make assumptions that are not guaranteed by the language specification: every once in a while, you’ll find people on IRC or similar asking for help with some of the examples from this book.

Also, IMO, the defmacro/g macro defined in this book would have been better defined as a reader macro than as a codewalking macro.
2 comments
weavie 2666 days ago
If I recall somewhere around SBCL 1.2 they changed the way the backquote worked (totally fine for them to do that as it wasn't specified in the standard..) which broke the Let over Lambda macro.

I think CCL still works.

The code here should fix the problems : https://github.com/thephoeron/let-over-lambda

Note, it's been a while since I looked at it so I could have some of the details wrong. The book is still well worth reading to help you understand the possibilities with a programmable programming language, but just bear in mind the various caveats..

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lispm 2666 days ago
> make assumptions that are not guaranteed by the language specification

I haven't read it, I have to confess. It would be useful if those assumptions were explicitly mentioned and explained in the book.

Some of the advanced macro stuff is easily outside of the standard and can be still useful, which for example lacks some of the environment features described in CLtL2.

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