Re: Basic Design Questions: function cells

["Eric J. Swenson" <Swenson@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA>]

I too don't understand the arguments of the efficiency of the function
cell concept, however, from the standpoint of looking at CL as a NEW
language (as opposed to a pot-pouri of all the existing Lisp dialects)
it certainly seems that CL is clutterred with pairs of functions/macros
to deal with functional and non-functional objects and that elegance has
been sacrificed in order to maintain compatibility with the various
older Lisp dialects.  I take it that the overriding factor in CL
development has been compatilibity with the major Lisp dialects as
opposed to designing a new language which was more internally consistent
and conceptually elegant?