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Been programming in CL for ~45 years (well, it wasn't CL back then), and still do so nearly every day. Julia is the first language I've seen in all that time that comes even barely close to the joy of CL, but, they just had to f-up the macros by requiring @s before them. Sigh. I guess it's back to CL.

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>but, they just had to f-up the macros by requiring @s before them.

This is one of the better design choices with Julia IMHO

The @ ruins most of the point of macros, which is to extend the language, provide cross-compatibility, and create DSLs (I guess that's three points...<-as are these). Anyway, since it's not surface homoiconic (although you can sort of dig down to the homoiconicity), it's better than most other languages, but still isn't a true contender for being an acceptable Lisp -- very close though. Just put the parens back and get rid of the junk syntax (and please stop idiotically marking the macros!), and I'd probably never look back.

Maclisp back then, I suppose?

I've used about 10 different Lisps - by which I mean, completely different Lisps, mostly in the pre-CL days, of course. I can't even remember most of them, although MacLisp was one for sure. I mostly remember the computers they ran on, which was many, ranging from IBM 360s to Apple ][s. I even wrote two of my own (which were used by literally no one, including me :-) and tried to make a micro-programmable PDP-something-or-other into a Lisp machine (which never really worked, although it did CAR and CDR really really fast!) Once CL came out ten thousand Lisp hackers like me breathed a major sigh of relief!

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