I see what you mean. I think there is less confusion about this kind of thing with Clojure, where a preference for immutable persistent data structures is stro

I see what you mean. I think there is less confusion about this kind of thing with Clojure, where a preference for immutable persistent data structures is strongly stated in the language design. So the persistent nature of lists and other data structures is fore grounded, and there is no confusion over why the equivalent of "del x[0]" is not supported.