Phillip J. Eby is thinking about how to implement a forward-chaining factbase (a fundamental mechanism of AI systems that enable rule- and fact-based programming) in Python. Very fascinating to read - he actually comes from the OO corner of Python (as one of the PEAK programmers - PEAK is basically the J2EE of the Python world) and here has his first hard encounters with functional programming. The whole thing also has practical implications: in PyProtocols (another project by Phillip), there is now already quite an advanced extension of Python's OO system towards a more CLOS-like environment with generic functions and multi-parameter dispatch for methods. Very interesting, as it opens up completely new possibilities. Here's the original article.