Re: Closures versus objects

At 1:22 PM -0500 2/16/07, Gary King wrote:
>If Lisp was re-written today, I'd guess that there would be more use 
>of generic functions for things like length. Then we would have:
>
>(length "butter")  ==> 6
>(length #(1 2 3))  ==> 3
>
>and so on...
>
>Unfortunately, Common Lisp had to incorporate 30-years of working 
>implementations into its standard without offending anyone (too 
>much!). Though lacking in elegance, this gives it the nutty crunchy 
>kruft many of us have come to love <smile>.
>
>that's my two cents,
>

Agree about nutty crunchy Common Lisp.

Dylan is "Lisp rewritten", by the way.  Love or hate
its Pascal-like syntax, it's filled with elegant ideas.