Good point. Actually Alan Kay does mention this on his interview on ACM queue (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=103

Good point. Actually Alan Kay does mention this on his interview on ACM queue (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523) when he says: "and in fact we know how to do it in a meta-way". And this has been the goal of Rubinius guys (Ruby written in Ruby). Somehow, not being "Turtles all the way down" does bother me, but, in pratical terms, it does not affect as much right now. Clojure is also criticize for not being fully implemented in Clojure, and I think this is a very pragmatic choice. It is always better when it is otherwise, but Jvm is portable enough that clojure does not need to be.