I also don't think it would be a huge difference for non-english programmers, although it may be a little win. But for my case, I don't prefer "_" just because of that. I'd say, the main reason is that "_" is more easily recognized by my parser (aka brain) as a special variable than "it" because it is an uncommon glyph. "it" gets lost in the flow of the program.

> I'm an American [mais je peux parler Français]

Now, that is not common and that is cool. I mean, not that you know how to speak French, but that you know how to speak a foreign language.

Those who know no foreign language knows nothing of their mother tongue. -- Goethe

It's not a coincidence that Larry Wall (Perl creator) studied linguistics...

> that's an aspect I hadn't thought of

Well in this case I can go to sleep happy, knowing I made you aware of something new ;-)

> a-predicate versus anaphoric thing is already annoying.

Yes! When I realized 'acons & the like were predicates, well I thought 'afn was, too...

> loop is a brilliant piece of code because it's a great little DSL for iteration; at the same time, also having simpler alternatives, e.g. each, available is really handy

Totally agreed. 'loop is something great to have as a library or something, but if it's the only way you have to do basic iteration, well, it sucks IMO. Because in top of knowing CL you have to know the 'loop stuff, which is completely different. Gosh, writing this message I realize I don't even remember how to iterate over a list while printing its elements. But yes, 'loop is extremely powerful.