Re: Keeping it kind

[Richard Stallman]

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > Let's not generalize too hastily.  FWIW, I'm not bothered in the
  > least by alist-get (even better: it calls cdr for me!), and I
  > surmise I'm not alone "around here" to not find assq more readable
  > than alist-get.

'assq' is a traditional core Lisp function from the 1960s.
I implemented it in GNU Emacs before it was even working to edit with.
To change its name would have beeen unthinkable.

Many years later, 'alist-get' was added.  We gave it a name according
to a systematic pattern.

Each of those names was handled the right way.  It is right to treat
them differently.




-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)