[kazinator]

> I saw the CARs and CDRs and CADDADDRs and thought it was all just academic baloney; interesting but not truly useful.

car and cdr are accessors for the fields of a basic data-structure; nothing academic about that. The very origin of the names is rooted in systems work, not academics.

(caddr x) provides a shorthand for (car (cdr (cdr x))), which is a pragmatic thing.

You know, like #(* % %) instead of (lambda (x) (* x x)).

[jjtheblunt]

i thought CAR and CDR were named after IBM (?) assembly language on an old machine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAR_and_CDR

[kazinator]

That's right; and that's a systems programming origin, not academics.

[kyberias]

He didn't say they are academic, he said he thought they were academic.