EuLisp

[MATHIS@USC-ISIF.ARPA]

About the possibility of changing things in Common Lisp.  Lots of
notations in mathematics were pretty arbitrary initially, but now
no one would think of changing them.  The same applies to some
decisions in Common Lisp.  (I think most of the decisions were
well founded and convincing arguments for them just need to be
reexplained; I'm talking about the weakest decisions.)  At this
point the argument has to be much stronger than "this is the way
it should have been done originally" -- all these kind of
decisions have to be considered in their time context.

One topic that came up at the Bath meeting and on the net is the
relationship between NIL and () and their CAR, CDR, symbolp, etc.
[This was just a side comment when we had a break for coffee, so
I didn't get everything.]  I would be at a loss to explain why
things are the way they are except to say that as people wrote
programs these were convenient ways for it to work and now that's
just the way people write programs.

I view standardization as very practical and related to the
marketplace, it is not language (re)design.

-- Bob