function specs

[Scott E. Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>]

I have read Moon's description of the function spec business, and then
went back and read the Gray edition of the Chine Nual, and the whole
thing still looks totally bogus to me.  I just don't see why you want to
confound the notion of where a function-object gets stashed with the
notion of what its name is.  If you want your function to have a name, I
see no reason for the name not to be a symbol -- then you can give it
properties, apply it, and so on.  If you don't want to name the thing,
just use lambda and pass around the function object itself.  If you
stash function objects in funny places, why not just put them there
without all the sound and fury?  What could be more extensible than
that?  I admit that we need something clean to replace the ugly old
Maclisp (DEFUN (symbol property) ...) business, but this proposal seems
like massive overkill and is extremely confusing, to me at least.

-- Scott