Lisp especially is built upon linked lists, which have different costs for (more or less) primitive operations (add to the front, get the front item, get a rest

Lisp especially is built upon linked lists, which have different costs for (more or less) primitive operations (add to the front, get the front item, get a rest list, get a random element, add to the end, ...) compare to a primitive vector. There are also other features not easily replicated by vectors. CL-USER 40 > (rest '(1 2 3)) (2 3) Above REST operation does not allocate any memory. CL-USER 41 > (subseq '#(1 2 3) 1) #(2 3) Above SUBSEQ returns a new vector. Alternatively it would need a more clever implementation underneath. OTOH getting a random element has a different complexity in a linked list vs. a vector.