"HarryO" <harryo / zipworld.com.au> wrote in 
news:20010724.193631.1899058025.12722 / zipworld.com.au:

> Seriously, though, he mentions as one of the big features they used in
> their development was the ability to define macros.  Not knowing anything
> much about LISP, I was wondering whether you can tell me whether ruby's
> eval (perhaps along with otherruby  features) can be used to achieve the
> same functionality as LISP's macros, or are they more complex beasts than
> that?  Ie, do they provide something we're missing out on?

From a post in comp.lang.lisp:

"An example of the power of LISP macros is the Common LISP Object System
(CLOS); an entire object oriented programming system that can be
implemented using macros. It polymorphism through generic functions,
multiple inheritance, and implementations of it even support meta-class
programming.   The (defclass ...) construct of CLOS is (implemented as) a
macro for defining a class.  Consider that when LISP macros were invented,
OOP didn't exist.  When OOP came along, entire programming language
families hit a brick wall and died. LISP programmers just wrote OOP
systems in LISP and merrily carried on. This inspires a kind of confidence
in LISP that it will be able to acquire any language feature that 
anyone comes up with in the forseeable future."

-- 
Roberto Lupi
http://www.lupi.ws/