I don't know, it doesn't seem overly smug to me. It seems borne of experience and helpfulness.
"And a parser generator is very overkill for a Lisp parser - just use recursive decent!" -- it's interesting that, as simple as Lisp is to parse, this is the same advice you'd get from experienced C/C++ compiler writers, from modern Clang to Stroustrup in 1993.
"And a parser generator is very overkill for a Lisp parser - just use recursive decent!" -- it's interesting that, as simple as Lisp is to parse, this is the same advice you'd get from experienced C/C++ compiler writers, from modern Clang to Stroustrup in 1993.