>Typical Java programs will do that all the time. True, especially considering that parametric polymorphism is done via "everything is a pointer" way (although

>Typical Java programs will do that all the time. True, especially considering that parametric polymorphism is done via "everything is a pointer" way (although I've heard something about introducing "value types" in Java in the future). Also Common Lisp's pairs are heterogeneous, polymorphic by nature, so I doubt there could be any other solution but pointers. For performant computations you would need unboxed arrays in Java, just as you would use SIMPLE-ARRAY in Common Lisp (which should be implemented efficiently in ABCL as well).