[gumby]

Some implementations (e.g. Common Lisp) have legacy oddities in them for back compatibility but newer implementations like scheme tend not to. Instead of CAR and CDR they have first and last, for example.

Emacs lisp is quite slow but adequate for purpose. You can write very high speed numeric programs in Lisp — another book by Sussman was on HN the other day and it’s all about physics, all written in scheme. The fact that code is data allows lots of complex optimizations that are harder or impossible to represent in c

[Oreb]

I think you got this backwards. Common Lisp does have `first` and `rest` as synonyms for `car` and `cdr`. As far as I know, Scheme does not. I believe you have to use `car` and `cdr` there (unless, of course, you define your own synonyms).

I could be wrong about Scheme: My Scheme knowledge is badly outdated, and was always incomplete.

[sigzero]

Racket has `first` and `rest`. I just tried it. But I tried an online scheme interpreter and it did not have it.

[catalogia]

first and rest are in racket, but racket has many things not in scheme (and doesn't have some things that are.) If you use the r5rs #lang (e.g. `racket -I r5rs`) you'll see that it doesn't have first and rest.

Also, first and rest in racket aren't synonyms for car and cdr. car and cdr take pairs, while first and last only take lists. Try this: (car '(1 . 2)) and (first '(1 . 2))

[lispm]

Strange, CL has first, rest, car and cdr.

Scheme R7RS small has only car and cdr.