I agree for the most part, but incidentally you would never (def x 1) and then (def x 5) in a running program -- you would use an atom, ref, or var instead. Re

I agree for the most part, but incidentally you would never (def x 1) and then (def x 5) in a running program -- you would use an atom, ref, or var instead. Redefinition of a symbol is permitted so you don't have to quit and restart your REPL every time you rewrite a function. A more meaningful objection is that you can shadow a local with a different local in Clojure, like this: (let [a (some-calculation) b (something-else) a (some-function-of a b)] a) which is essentially what is being done in the Python code. I don't think there are many strong arguments to make in favor of Clojure over Python other than concurrency and macros, and maybe the immutable hashes.