In Scheme try and compare

   (car (list 1 2 3 4))

with

   (car (lambda (x) x))

But I guess we are talking about different levels of abstraction?

Not that this has too much to do with what you two were talking about, but (car '(lambda (x) x)) will return lambda in Scheme.

You are right.

Actually I was almost going to add (car '(lambda (x) x)) to my post in the first place; in line with `The syntax for functions is lists.'

Indeed, you are right about Scheme (and Arc). Thanks for the correction.

Sure, no problem. I guess Emacs Lisp falls under the old-and-broken category. And Picolisp eschews functions as a data-type by choice. Do you know whether Picolisp offers lexical scoping?

As the other response says. The FAQ provides some rationale & makes it clear you can, actually, build robust software with picolisp's model of scoping. My understanding is, ``dynamic scoping is faster for an interpreter'' and ``funarg is easy to avoid and closures are possible''.

See the three following points:

http://www.software-lab.de/doc/faq.html#dynamic

http://www.software-lab.de/doc/faq.html#problems

http://www.software-lab.de/doc/faq.html#closures

It offers something similar-but-not-quite called transient symbols: http://www.software-lab.de/doc/faq.html#problems

Alternative phrases for similar-but-not-quite: insidious, error-prone.