mikera
commented
9 years ago FWIW I have come to the conclusion that vars are an implementation detail that provide two things:
- A binding that can be created / mutated / rebound
- A place to store some metadata
Both of these seem relatively orthogonal: I'm thinking that the first is entirely superseded by immutable environments, and the second can be done by allowing metadata to be attached to symbols in immutable environments.
Right now var quoting is supported by the grammar but unimplemented in the parser. Pixie and ClojureScript have both implemented vars to some degree, and there is a case to be made that vars are a compile time structure for adding metadata to a symbolic name. Not sure how far I'm willing to let this go, but adding metadata to a named value is definitely useful.