The LOOP macro is actually a very different approach: it's an embedded domain specific language for iteration tasks. The language is thought to be more natural

The LOOP macro is actually a very different approach: it's an embedded domain specific language for iteration tasks. The language is thought to be more natural (-> 'conversational') than formal -> an actual influence from Interlisp, where this macro originally came from. If we talk about the approach of using larger building blocks with named parameters, that's also typical in UNIX, since most UNIX commands have zillions of named arguments, even more so than typical Common Lisp functions. Typically it is easier in using interactive command languages to fill out common options to a command, than to write programs. For example 'ls' does not expose a bunch of functions to combine, but is a powerful command with lots of named options: https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ls.1.html https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/ls.1.html Named parameters/arguments are not generally common in Lisp. Emacs Lisp did not have them and wanted to avoid them explicitly.