3 ms·

> for a relatively niche language Thinking of the queen of languages relegated to "a relatively niche language" really made me sad.

• nxobject 2y ago
  Tell me about it: I still think in Scheme when I’m writing any other of CL’s dynamically typed, garbage-collected, first-class function progeny. I just wish that more languages had symbols.
  • NikkiA 2y ago
    > I just wish that more languages had symbols. They're just a global enum, almost all languages have enums.
    • jmercouris 2y ago
      Is the implementation specified that they are a global enum? I don't believe so.
    • BoingBoomTschak 2y ago
      Symbols are dynamic, not static. And uninterned symbols exist. You could say that it's a global (per package) weak hash table, from my understanding.
    • dreamcompiler 2y ago
      Symbols exist as data structures at runtime that can be inspected, have their names compared, and have a value that is separate from their name. Enums typically don't do any of that.