Re: Emacs Lisp and Guile

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    > But I think that running arbitrary code is not good
    > design--variables should be variables, not act like functions.

    But they could be used as the basis for all kind of funny
    variable-like behavior.

It could be.  I wonder if there is a way to implement this that
discourages misuse of the feature.

Perhaps, instead of providing a way to say "run this code when there
is an access to variable FOO", it could have to be done in two steps:
first, define a feature for something special to do when accessing
certain variables; second, turn on one of these features for a certain
variable.

Of course, it is possible to write a higher level feature that would
package up and combine those two steps.  It would not be difficult.
But many people would get the point and realize that was the wrong
thing to do.