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I disagree. You make two claims: familiarity, and beginner friendliness.

For the first, I think it's a mistake to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. I don't think JS developers have had problems adjusting to the lack of return in arrow functions.

Beginners have no preconceived notions of how a programming language should operate, and return makes the language model more complex.

1 + 1 evaluates to 2, but (in a language that requires return)

def foo = 1 + 1

foo

doesn't for no good reason. This breaks the simple substitution model of evaluation.

These claims could be addressed emperically, but I guess neither of us are going to do the research. :-)

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---- THIS ---- (defun sum-helper (items total) (cond (items (sum-helper (cdr items) (+ total (car items)))) (t total))) (defun sum (&rest items) (sum-helper items 0)) (print (sum 1 2 3 4)) ----- OR ----- (defun sum-helper2 (items total) (if (not items) (return-from sum-helper2 total)) (sum-helper2 (cdr items) (+ total (car items)))) (defun sum2 (&rest items) (sum-helper2 items 0)) (print (sum2 5 6 7 8))