Well, we could at least have a very lightweight bridge between both worlds, by allowing (and automatically converting) symbols into string where strings are needed and vice versa.
Code crashing because, for instance, you tried to concatenate a string and a symbol is rather annoying, but these bugs keep happening and the developer's intention is rather obvious there.
Oh I don't disagree, I'm actually a Smalltalker and I'm accustomed to Symbol being a subclass of String and a String being a list of Characters. I actually have refactoring tools so I just wanted to point out that they are different for more than just implementation reasons and there's a logical reason to have symbols beyond mere optimization.
I just hang out here because I like to see how a new Lisp is born and how you guys think, even though I don't actually use Arc.
