Err, what?

So languages are plagued with implementation-specific schematics and in truth, all languages grow up at the same time with their reference implementation and it's the reference implementation that defines that language.

Basically, I don't care what the ideal implementation for a language X might look like in 10 years from now, what I care about is (1) what am I able to do with it right now and (2) what's the community's culture like?

Lately I've been learning some Clojure. I'm fascinated by how Clojure developers work with the source-code. Emacs is an extremely capable editor, but for Clojure it's a full-fledged IDE and a shell for the REPL and it can do anything you'd expect from an IDE. And the whole workflow is basically typing code, sending that piece of code for evaluation in the REPL, typing in the REPL some quick invocations to see how it works, rinse and repeat. The learning experience is also completely awesome, as for some reason you end up reading a lot of the standard library's implementation - coupled with the REPL on the other side in which to quickly type what you read - the workflow is amazing (though Smalltalk developers are probably laughing at me right now).

> So languages are plagued with implementation-specific schematics and in truth, all languages grow up at the same time with their reference implementation and it's the reference implementation that defines that language.

Reference implementations only define languages that lack a proper ANSI/ISO/ECMA standard.

> though Smalltalk developers are probably laughing at me right now

Yes we are. :)

Emacs is a light version of a Lisp Machine. Now imagine how would your OS be, if everything would be as customizable as Emacs.

Sadly, Lisp machines and Smalltalk environments died on the mainstream.