Marcel Weiher wrote:
> 
> > From: Henrik Gedenryd <Henrik.Gedenryd at lucs.lu.se>
> >
> > Another, and less important, question is why the TNode classes are
> entirely
> > separated from the Node classes of the regular Smalltalk parser,
> instead of
> > extending these. Is there a reason that I've missed?
> 
> Just came across the paper "Deltatalk: An Empirically and
> Aesthetically Motivated Simplifcation of the Smalltalk-80 Language"
> by Alan Borning (1987).  One of the changes they recommend is a
> simplification of the treating programs as data.

Please tell me where I may find this paper.

> 
> That should also make it easier to put new syntactic "skins" on the
> core language of message passing objects, for scripting, constraints,
> visual interpretations etc.
> 
> > (Btw, inlining is among other things the answer to macros in Lisp,
> as asked
> > about a while ago. I never saw why one would want macros with a
> separate
> > syntax when you could just have inlining of the regular code.)
> 
> Not knowing much if anything about LISP macros, the idea of
> eliminating higher order programming constructs at compile-time (only
> when desired!) is also quite attractive, in addition to AOP-like
> stuff.
> 
> Marcel

CL macros can do a *lot* more than just provide inlining capabilities. 
Please don't associate them with C's brain damaged macros.  If you want
to check this out for yourself, you should read "On Lisp" by Paul
Graham, ISBN 0-13-030552-9, published by Prentice Hall.