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2 points by elibarzilay 5413 days ago | link | parent

No, modern lisps don't do that. (Except maybe for newlisp, which does what you'd call "the right thing" with `eval`, and even encourages doing so; but this goes with the fact that it throws lexical scope out the window.)

As for the quote, it depends on how you view it. You can take it anywhere to proper criticism of fexprs (which has become the popular view since then), or you can take it as criticizing the fact that special forms are needed, or if you squint hard enough, you can say that it's advocating a language like Haskell. Considering the first two options, I think that the first one (criticism of fexprs) is very explicit, the second one is less likely.

In any case, trying to get an `eval` that works with lexical scope is related to fexprs. So the feature that you want is one that Kay criticizes.