Questions on different design from lisp: Mal symbol do not use property lists? about mal

[wasamasa]

It's important to remember that MAL follows Clojure semantics, which is a Lisp-1 (same as Scheme and Picolisp). You're speaking of Common Lisp and Emacs Lisp, which are both Lisp-2. In a Lisp-2, it's common to implement independent function/value namespaces by stuffing several slots into a symbol (for example by using a property list). However, this isn't necessarily linked to being a Lisp-2. For example Picolisp does use property lists as well and some Scheme dialects allow accessing the property list, too. Overall, Lisp dialects seem to choose for or against this design based on whether they place importance on symbol manipulation or not (which Picolisp definitely favors). Given that MAL mostly serves learning purposes, symbol manipulation is not considered important at all.