My two cents on strings/symbols, there are semantic reasons they should always be separate. It's not about string mutation, ignore the implementation, it isn't relevant.
Two symbols 'foo can always be considered to mean the same thing, two strings "foo" can't, they may be only the same by coincidence. This matters if automated refactoring tools become available because you can safely rename all occurrences of a symbol, the same cannot be said of strings.
Mixing strings and symbols is a bad idea, they are different things and should remain that way.
Well, we could at least have a very lightweight bridge between both worlds, by allowing (and automatically converting) symbols into string where strings are needed and vice versa.
Code crashing because, for instance, you tried to concatenate a string and a symbol is rather annoying, but these bugs keep happening and the developer's intention is rather obvious there.
Oh I don't disagree, I'm actually a Smalltalker and I'm accustomed to Symbol being a subclass of String and a String being a list of Characters. I actually have refactoring tools so I just wanted to point out that they are different for more than just implementation reasons and there's a logical reason to have symbols beyond mere optimization.
I just hang out here because I like to see how a new Lisp is born and how you guys think, even though I don't actually use Arc.
