ECL and EL1

[CB Leyerle]

I believe the language EL1 and the programming environment ECL are
largely the design of Thomas "Mumblefratz" Cheatham at Harvard, and
funded by the Air Force.  "EL1" reputedly stands for "Extensible
Language 1"--extensible inasmuch as one can extend (or redefine)
the syntax of the language.  Apart from the generic, such as
introducing new data types, one can also do a variety of extremely
brain-damage things like define the symbol '+' to mean minus, the
symbol '8' to be a function returning an array, etc.  Debugging was
a nightmare as I recall.  I imagine one could do these same contortions
in C with #define, but that would lack the anarchy of doing them during
interpretation of the program, where they can be redefined.
No I am not a fan.  Entomophobically yours,     Flyerly.