[S4M]

If I understand well, you wrote/are writing a macro that parses your algol-ish language, so you can do, if your language is java, something like:

    (let ((my-java-class  
           (java public class MyClass {
                   public MyClass() {}
                   public myMethod() {System.out.println("hello");}
                  })))
          (myMethod (my-java-class)))

And it shows on the REPL:

     hello

That's quite impressive, and I can see how it opens new horizons.

[jgw]

Bit late replying to this, so I hope you see it, but as I noted elsewhere, the key here is something called a "reader macro". This is a mechanism by which you can control the behaviour of the Lisp reader (i.e., the READ function), and occurs before regular macroexpansion. I use [] to denote s-expressions in the embedded-language domain, and {} to introduce native syntax, which passes its contents through to an actual parser - which returns s-expressions. I can print the resulting forms in native syntax, embedded-s-expressions, or plain Lisp. It's a neat demonstration of the superficiality of syntax.

Perhaps another interesting observation is that what I'm building today is not actually what I originally set out to do, which was more limited in scope. Perhaps another weakness of CL is its tendency to seduce you into feature-creepism. :)