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Comment by lisper

8 years ago

I would accept that if Lisp were a runaway success, but it's not. It is very nearly a dead language [1]. It is entirely possible that the unwillingness of the Lisp community to give up in this obscure terminology in favor of something more user friendly contributed to its demise.

[1] Look at e.g. https://madnight.github.io/githut/. The most popular Lisp is Clojure, with a whopping 0.33% market share. Scheme and Common Lisp don't even make it to the top 50.

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lisper

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kbp  8 years ago

> It is entirely possible that the unwillingness of the Lisp community to give up in this obscure terminology in favor of something more user friendly contributed to its demise.

What more-user-friendly terminology do you suggest?

  • lisper  8 years ago

    Did you not read the upstream comments? FST and RST, or LHS and RHS depending on whether the intent is to access the cons as a linked list or a pair.

    • kazinator  8 years ago

      The D in CDR already corresponds to "dexter-" (right); we just need "L" for "levo-":

      CLR: cell levo/left reference.

      CDR: cell dexter reference.

      Organic chemistry uses these letters and prefixes. E.g. "L-glutamine", "D-glucose" (a.k.a "dextrose").

      The H and S (hand side) don't really contribute anything. (Yes, left is side and a hand).

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