Well, opinions may vary, but I own this book and the word phenomenal is not appropriate. Most CL hackers I know do not take this book too seriously. It is loaded with pretense and self-congratulatory comments.

Yes, opinions vary. I found LOL very instructive, but maybe I was in just the right place when I discovered it.

In any case, what I was responding to in your earlier comment was the implication (I thought) that Hoyte doesn't understand "lisp as a family of languages with many dialects." But since you've read LOL, that cannot have been your point...

My point was more to the readers of HN who wouldn't know, and the title just says "Lisp is not functional" so I was providing some context.

Thanks for clarifying. I can see how it would be confusing for someone to be dropped into chapter 5 of the book with a section title like that.

Common Lisp hackers may use "Lisp" colloquially as a shorthand for the language they're working with ("Common Lisp" is a bit of a mouthful, after all), but I don't think many of them are confused about the existence and nature of other lisps, or that they tend to disagree with academics on this.