It is as you say, you must make a choice, trying to have both becomes very confusing. In LFE (Lisp Flavoured Erlang) I went the other and added proper scoping.

It is as you say, you must make a choice, trying to have both becomes very confusing. In LFE (Lisp Flavoured Erlang) I went the other and added proper scoping. It is the lack of scoping which I consider to be the most confusing and has caused some strange features. Having mutable variables is definitely possible but I don't really see the problems with immutable ones. You get used to it very quickly.