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>For instance, ' is used instead of #' for function quoting in various places (prevents compilation of the function) and use of eval on a form instead of apply on a list

I don't see how these are evidence of the author having "CL background". CL is pretty much identical to Emacs lisp with regards to both of these things.

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the #' in CL and Elisp are not the same. Elisp is a lisp-1 vs CL 'lisp-2'. The only similarity is that #'foo expands too (function foo). In CL (function foo) looks up foo in the function namespace (and iiuc can be omitted where functions are expected) in elisp the function form is like quote except for when byte-compiling. It allows the function to be byte-compiled.

Truth be told, I know nothing of CL. I do know quite a bit about Elisp, and since it's not an Elisp-ism, and the CL and Elisp columns share so much identical code (a lot from cl.el), I assumed it was a CL-ism. My bad.

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