And you're right: we were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive-html/msg04045.html Guy Steele I should not choose long, hard words just to make other persons think that I know a lot. I should try to make my thoughts clear; if they are clear and right, then other persons can judge my work as it ought to be judged. http://www.brics.dk/~hosc/local/HOSC-12-3-pp221-236.pdf Guy Steele If you give someone Fortran, he has Fortran. If you give someone Lisp, he has any language he pleases. http://bc.tech.coop/blog/071226.html Guy Steele Meta means that you step back from your own place. What you used to do is now what you see. What you were is now what you act on. Verbs turn to nouns. What you used to think of as a pattern is now treated as a thing to put in the slot of an other pattern. A meta foo is a foo in whose slots you can put foos. http://wiki.gungfu.de/Main/Meta Guy Steele