Here's a more balanced take: "Build Your Own Lisp" is an opinionated, idiosyncratic take on one style of programming in C and one way to implement a Lisp-like

Here's a more balanced take: "Build Your Own Lisp" is an opinionated, idiosyncratic take on one style of programming in C and one way to implement a Lisp-like language. If you go into it treating it like an intro textbook to the "standard" way of implementing an interpreter, it may lead you astray. Worse, it may lead you astray without realizing it if it's your first book on the topic. On the other hand, if you approach it as following an author as they deliberately wander off the well-trod path of implementing Lisps with recursive descent and all the other classic techniques, then you can have a good time and maybe get some interesting ideas out of it. For what it's worth, I quite enjoyed the book. But I had enough programming language experience already to know when the author was teaching you the basics versus teaching you their own thing. The more the world world becomes aggregated, summarized, averaged, and watered down, the more I crave stuff like this that is quirky and unique.