Elisp terminology (was: Re: [PATCH] Desktop mode saves mark-ring too verbosely)

[Kelly Dean <kelly@prtime.org>]

Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
>> will need to understand or modify, so using a technical
>> abbreviation isn't a problem. Emacs already has abbreviated names
>> such as ⌜fboundp⌝ and ⌜fmakunbound⌝ for programmer-only things,
>> instead of ⌜function-bound-predicate⌝ and ⌜function-make-unbound⌝.
>
> And the recent trend is to deprecate such ancient usage, including the
> venerable `car', `cdr', and `cons'.

Look what happened when I proposed changing the names of set-default, setq-default, and default-value. They're misleading, but you and Eli say they're too old to change. IOW, bugs with seniority are features.

The names of car and cdr are even older. And they're not misleading; they're just archaic. There's both less need and less ability to change them than there is to change the former three.

And yes, the abbreviations ⌜cons⌝, ⌜fboundp⌝, and ⌜fmakunbound⌝ are old, but they're neither misleading nor archaic. I'm a good benchmark, since I'm easily fooled by misleading names and I have bad memory, yet these names don't cause me problems.