The Background for CAR and CDR
This isn&#x27;t a very good article. First of all, this has to be the most rehashed curiosa topic about Lisp, ever. Secondly, &quot;keeping in touch with tradition&quot; isn&#x27;t a shallow thing you do for fun---it is both about identity and about the ability to read and reuse code, even though it is decades old. And thirdly, the reason you keep car and cdr isn&#x27;t only about tradition, but also about the ability to quickly reach into nested lists:<p>(cdaddr &#x27;(1 (2 (3 4 (5) (6 7) 8) 9) (10 1 3) 3))
=&gt; (1 3)<p>Without these oldies, you would have to write several combinations of first, second etc. and rest, or some combination of first&#x2F;rest and nth n list.