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Regarding Lisp's ordering, this has come up in the article "What if Lisp was invented by the Japanese?"[1]. Note also that in the comments to that article[2],

Regarding Lisp's ordering, this has come up in the article "What if Lisp was invented by the Japanese?"[1]. Note also that in the comments to that article[2], I mentioned that "Japanese Lisp" is something I find easier to read and would prefer to write, even as a native English speaker. 1. http://lispnyc.org/blog/euske/what-if-lisp-was-invented-by-the-japanese http://lispnyc.org/blog/euske/what-if-lisp-was-invented-by-t... 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2213012

kazinator 9y ago
If Lisp had been invented in Japan, maybe the main connective of an expression would have ended up as the last item visually: (1 1 +). Maybe. However, it would still be the first element of the list in the abstract data structure: i.e. the equivalent of (car '(1 1 +)) -> +. (Or, rather, of course, ((1 1 +)' car) -> +. Let's use the fantasy read syntax.) The main point is not that + is leftmost or rightmost, but that it's at a fixed position in the data structure, and that it is the first/most accessible position.