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From: jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: namespaces
Message-ID: <4433@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 89 09:07:48 GMT
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 23


> From: johnson@csli.STANFORD.EDU (Mark Johnson)
> Someone else just sent a message on the net asking
> why CommonLisp uses different name spaces for variable and function
> definitions.  Personally, I think that this is one of the worst
> features of CommonLisp.  It makes my programs look like fields of #'
> symbols and funcalls.

I think that having one namespace for functions and variables is an
incredibly big lose.  When using languages with only one namespace, I
constantly have to think about what I can call things...  It's an
unnecessary burden on the programmer.

Besides, functions and variables are *different*.  :-)

> It is also one of the hardest things for
> students to learn - they get continually confused between the use of
> LIST as a function and a variable.

When I was first learning Lisp, it took me forever to understand macros and
backquote.  That doesn't make them any less useful.

Jamie
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