Why should local bindings use let? In scheme internal (define ...) is defined in terms of letrec, which can add some overhead when letrec is unoptimized, but for schemes with optimized letrec (guile 3.0, chez, racket...) (define ...) is just as fast as let or let* unless you start doing cyclic references.

The only real reason to not use Def would be if the bound symbol escapes the scope, but that would be ridiculous for a modern language.

In Clojure 'def' creates a 'var' and those are global in the namespace.

> The only real reason to not use Def would be if the bound symbol escapes the scope, but that would be ridiculous for a modern language.

Its not 'ridiculous' to have a consistent definition of what something does.

It does exactly what the documentation says it does:

"Creates and interns or locates a global var with the name of symbol and a namespace of the value of the current namespace (ns)."

When using STM, delete that code and start again without STM.

i was thinking that, too, while reading this. It has been a while since I wrote any Clojure, but I didn't remember ever using `ref-set` with STM.

also, local bindings with `let` were the defacto standard.