The problem is that FIRST and REST doesn't cover the whole idea of cons cells. That's why the old names still exist.
The Lisp practice for 40 years is to use FIRST, REST, LIST, APPEND, LIST*, ... when we speak about List Processing.
CONS, CAR and CDR are used when cons cells are used for things like trees, graphs and other data structures. It's an indicator that the code is very low-level and used for assembling other data structures from cons cells.
The Lisp practice for 40 years is to use FIRST, REST, LIST, APPEND, LIST*, ... when we speak about List Processing.
CONS, CAR and CDR are used when cons cells are used for things like trees, graphs and other data structures. It's an indicator that the code is very low-level and used for assembling other data structures from cons cells.