The Importance of Terminology's Quality

[Kyle McGivney]

> • Module, Block, in Mathematica is in lisp's various “let*”. The
> lisp's keywords “let”, is based on the English word “let”. That word
> is one of the English word with multitudes of meanings. If you look up
> its definition in a dictionary, you'll see that it means many
> disparate things. One of them, as in “let's go”, has the meaning of
> “permit; to cause to; allow”. This meaning is rather vague from a
> mathematical sense. Mathematica's choice of Module, Block, is based on
> the idea that it builds a self-contained segment of code. (however,
> the choice of Block as keyword here isn't perfect, since the word also
> has meanings like “obstruct; jam”)

If the purpose of let is to introduce one or more variable bindings,
then I don't see how changing to block or module would improve
anything. I've always found it fairly intuitive to parse (let ((x
5)) ...) to "let x be five". Additionally, replacing let with the
synonyms you provided would approximately yield "permit x to be five"
or "allow x to be five". In my mind you have constructed an argument
in favor of let here (obviously it's better than block, because
nobody's going to come along and be confused about whether let will
"obstruct" or "jam" them :)

There are many easy targets to poke at in the CL spec. let isn't one
of those.