Practical Common Lisp
Practical Common Lisp by Peter Seibelby Peter Seibel
Shares rank 21 of 115 programming books by recommenders
People recommend it as a hands-on route into Common Lisp that gets readers writing working programs, and as the usual reference for those who already program.
People recommend it as a hands-on route into Common Lisp that gets readers writing working programs, and as the usual reference for those who already program.
7 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Hands-on path to working code
“What you usually do is follow the book instructions and get some result, then go to do some exploration on your own.”
Comment from 17 Dec 2025 in “AWS CEO says replacing junior devs with AI is 'one of the dumbest ideas'” “it got me far enough that i was able to write two applications that i ended up using for several years.”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp” “This book gets you using lisp like you would say golang.”
Comment from 17 Jul 2026 in “A Road to Lisp: Which Lisp” Widely used reference for Lisp
“the usual reference if you already know how to program is PCL”
Comment from 27 May 2026 in “Coalton is an efficient, statically typed Lisp with ideas from Haskell and OCaml” “they both proved to be decent choices”
Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: How did you learn to code?”
Other programming books people recommend
The four most recommended other programming books, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crafting Interpretersby Robert Nystrom | 60 | 4 | 94% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Clean Codeby Robert C. Martin | 31 | 87 | 26% | 9 | — | — |
| The Pragmatic Programmerby Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas | 28 | 1 | 97% | 7 | — | Approved |
| How to Design Programsby Matthias Felleisen and Robert Bruce Findler and Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi | 18 | 2 | 90% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Practical Common Lispby Peter SeibelThis page | 7 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
6 of the 7 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it got me far enough that i was able to write two applications that i ended up using for several years.”
“This book gets you using lisp like you would say golang.”
“the usual reference if you already know how to program is PCL”
“they both proved to be decent choices”
“What you usually do is follow the book instructions and get some result, then go to do some exploration on your own.”
“Here's a random online book”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.