They can be useful, but I can never remember which one of let, run, with, apply, and also I currently need. Also, I've noticed that they motivate overly "clever" code, especially but not exclusively in junior programmers.
They absolutely do come with a goldilocks problem attached, best used in moderation, and require a bit of an aesthetic to develop. But what doesn't. What appears "clever" to the reader is actually dead simple train of thought coding at write time, with many types of bugs waiting to bite in an imperative implementation simply not possible.
That's why I like writing scope-heavy and then transforming to an aesthetic middle ground between scope expression and imperative. Name stuff when you have something meaningful to say, when there's something helpful to express in a name, not when the syntax mandates a locally unique ID.
They can be useful, but I can never remember which one of let, run, with, apply, and also I currently need. Also, I've noticed that they motivate overly "clever" code, especially but not exclusively in junior programmers.