LAMBDA syntax counter-proposal

[David A. Moon <MOON at MIT-MC>]

I don't think this proposal is much of a win.  It leaves no place to
put syntax for such things as keywords.  Also it isn't true that
there is one list element for each parameter, since the supplied-p
variable for an optional is itself a parameter but does not have its
own list element.

It seems completely wrongheaded to me to design the syntax of one's
language to make the compiler (actually, the function that parses lambda
lists) be a dozen lines smaller.  The syntax of the language should be
designed for the convenience of human beings, not for the minor convenience
of some program.

If there are many programs that want to take apart lambda-lists, the
function to do that (which exists in different form in all implementations)
can easily be standardized and made part of the language.  We don't design
our array implementation so programs can get the dimensions by calling car
and cdr on the array; why should we design our argument-description syntax
that way?