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Comment by fiddlerwoaroof | Hacker News Reader

All I know is that in Python, JS and Clojure is I’ve accidentally written code like:

    def foo(str):
      v = str(1)
      . . .

Which resulted in head-scratching errors like “str is not a function”.

EDIT: I agree that hygienic macros aren't the right way to solve this issue.

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With Lisp-2 designs as discussed in the article this is not an issue, as variables and functions are in different namespaces:

  CL-USER> (defun foo (list) (list list))
  FOO
  CL-USER> (foo 42)
  (42)

In this case the function attached to the symbol LIST is applied to the argument with the same name, but that isn't a problem.

To further illustrate, in the above example the LIST symbol is imported from the package COMMON-LISP and has a function, plist etc. attached to it:

  CL-USER> (symbol-package 'list)
  #<PACKAGE "COMMON-LISP">
  CL-USER> (symbol-function 'list)
  #<FUNCTION LIST>
  CL-USER> (symbol-plist 'list)
  NIL

Yeah, I’ve been writing Common Lisp for six years now: Lisp-2s, IMO, make the right trade-offs

Macros don't appear in your code example, so they cannot solve anything.

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