In lisp, think of symbols as things that represent other things. Instead of having to evaluate each expression in the complexity that the programmer builds, eve

In lisp, think of symbols as things that represent other things. Instead of having to evaluate each expression in the complexity that the programmer builds, everything can be substituted until the computer is left with a simple but expansive form. The machine is very good at evaluating this simple form, because it only needs to look up a few things to process the entire calculation, which is really just a collection of an ordered organization of the same calculations over and over again. A pointer is not the actual data. It's just a trail of connections that eventually lead to the data you want, instead of having to manage a bunch of data you don't need to, or want to manage. It's computationally efficient and it is elegant. It represents exactly what you tell it to represent.