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Comment by jpr | Hacker News Reader

> LET* indicates bad code, something I never understood

Neither did I, until I encountered something along the lines of:

    (let* ((foo ...)

           (foo ...)

           (foo ...)

           (foo ...)

           (foo ...)

           (foo ...)

           (foo ...))

        ...)

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That's strangely unidiomatic. I wonder why that person didn't just write:

  (let ((foo ...))
    (setf foo ...)
    (setf foo ...)
    ...)

On a tangential note, while I try to avoid multiple assignment as much as possible, I also enjoy availing myself of CL's imperativeness whenever doing so makes my code smaller or more efficient. I really like CL's multiparadigm approach. The sweet spot seems to be: allow side-effects in the small (i.e. within functions or small scopes) and be as strict as you can in composing larger pieces.

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