Because people like bikeshedding. Cons is a little bit weird, but it is par with C's "typedef", it could have been named better. car and cdr are weirder, but t

Because people like bikeshedding. Cons is a little bit weird, but it is par with C's "typedef", it could have been named better. car and cdr are weirder, but there are reasons people use them over first and rest: 1- they are shorter and 2- they can be combined (caadr, cadr, cddr, instead for (first (rest x)) etc). It is still bikeshedding. You learn that stuff in less time than what it takes to create an angry post. And if you really hate them, you don't have to use them. Just define a macro and you can stop complaining. Your coworkers may not like this though.