I'm not really saying any of those choices is wrong (although clearly you can make design mistakes that make the leaks problematic, if you pick (c)). It's more

I'm not really saying any of those choices is wrong (although clearly you can make design mistakes that make the leaks problematic, if you pick (c)). It's more that none of them are clearly right. Really I'm rejecting the idea that that equality as presented in CL was any of: wrong, design by committee, or something we have learned do better since '84. There are historical artifacts in CL that aren't great (cf filesystem stuff) but this wasn't a good example in my opinion. I hear your argument - not fully convinced other than in a 80/20 sense. And CL was not designed as a language to leave the 20% out in the cold. To be fair I don't find clojure compelling as a lisp but I don't think I'm being biased in above.