Messages as objects

[Jonathan A Rees <JAR @ MIT-MC>]

    Date: Tue, 18 Dec 84 23:48 EST
    From: Henry Lieberman <Henry%MIT-OZ at SCRC-STONY-BROOK.ARPA>

    This may be too radical for some of you guys, but I would like to suggest
    that messages should be objects [and not just symbols]! 
    So far, none of the Lisp-embedded object systems permit this, although fully
    object-oriented systems like Smalltalk and Actors do.

None?  T's object system does exactly what you suggest, with many of the
benefits you point out (e.g.  defaults are handled pretty much as you
say).  Messages (a.k.a. "keys" or "operations") are objects which can
themselves answer messages.  There is a form which evaluates to an
anonymous message, much in the same way that a LAMBDA form evaluates to
an anonymous functions.  The usual convention is to assign them to
global variables (functions), but that's not necessary.

Jonathan