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Fundamental Problems of Lisp, the Cons Cell (2024)
ISP, the Cons Cell (this essay is originally written around 2008) The Cons Business The other fundamental problem in the language is its cons cells as its list construction primitive. Lisp at core is based on functional programing on lists.
The cons and the associated {car cdr cadr caadr caddr caaar cdddr …} are fundamentally rooted in the lisp langs, is thus not something that can be easily mended. Lisp's cons forces programer to think of list in a low-level nested of 2-item construction, with explicit functions like “cddr”, “cadaar” etc, and even a special notation “(A . The overall effect of the cons is that it prevents lisp to have a uniform high level treatment of lists, with the result that development of functions that work on tree are inconsistent and few.
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