I was merely pointing out that 1) the technique isn't new, and 2) it doesn't require first-class macros, so it's usable in Arc 3.1, etc. Sorry if I gave the impression that Arc/Nu was the first to come up with the idea.

When multiple people independently come up with the same idea, I see that as evidence that the idea is good, not that people are a bunch of thieving stealers. I don't believe in the idea of "stealing an idea", since ideas can only be copied, not stolen. Unfortunately, in the past I've used the word "stealing" to mean "copying". I'll stop doing that.

In any case, I don't think people should be penalized in any way shape or form for copying ideas from others. What matters is whether the idea is good or not, not who came up with it first. At the same time, pointing out that an idea has been invented in the past means that:

1) It can give extra validation to it, based on the assumption that if an idea is independently invented multiple times, it's probably a good idea

2) It suggests further research that you can do, to contrast how these other people tweaked the idea for their own uses. Whereas, if an idea is original, you're completely on your own, without much help.

While developing Nulan, it's been a lot of help for me to research how Arc, Clojure, Racket, etc. handle things like immutability, types, laziness, etc. In that case, having existing ideas to draw from is a plus not a minus.

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"[...] not the link he referred to [...]"

At a quick glance, that link doesn't seem much like the technique that Kernel or Arc/Nu uses... it's more complicated and seems to be more like rocketnia's latemac: http://arclanguage.org/item?id=14521

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"We're all stumbling around here, discovering and rediscovering things."