> Then on top of that I have to go look up what let* is and why it is presumably different from let. One more thing I don't want to do. Emacs lisp sucks.

Don't modern languages require you to also look up definitions of functions. Learning peculiarities like this in Common Lisp (eg equality) really opened my eyes to how much "magic" there is modern high level languages. Personally I dont like magic and lisps tend to be the most magic free high level languages