I actually really like symbols, and the existence of a symbol type in lisp is one of my favorite features. Technically in Nulan a 'symbol' is replaced by a 'box', and if your box had a string property called "name" that held the name of the variable they would probably be interchangeable.
Either way, I agree that your list tools are generally more useful than quote/unquote. The main things I use it for are 1) to get a literal symbol and 2) to get something like list splicing. It looks rather arcane and adds clutter though, so in most other cases I wouldn't use it.
If there was another way to just splice in a list in the middle of the code the way Nulan seems to, I might not feel as attached to it.
"I actually really like symbols, and the existence of a symbol type in lisp is one of my favorite features."
I too like symbols. But I think if you examine why you like symbols, you'll realize that you like them because... most other languages don't have a first-class way to refer to variables. But in Lisp you can, using symbols.
Well, Nulan has both symbols (representing unhygienic variables), and boxes (representing hygienic variables). It's just that hygienic variables are so much better in so many situations that there's not much reason to make it easy to create symbols in Nulan.
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"Technically in Nulan a 'symbol' is replaced by a 'box', and if your box had a string property called "name" that held the name of the variable they would probably be interchangeable."
Yes boxes have a name property. This is currently only used when printing the box. Yes you could convert from a box to a symbol, but Nulan doesn't do this, because I haven't found a reason to.
