[mypetocean]

The funny thing is that it's _not_ more parentheses, roughly, than one would expect to find in any Algol/C-inspired language, like C# or JavaScript.

The opening paren is simply relocated to the other side of the function name or keyword.

What we're experiencing is just a cognitive bias which causes us to prefer the more familiar over the less familiar ([the mere-exposure effect, also called the familiarity principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect)).

I've never used a Lisp-family language, but I find the reaction against parentheses to be overblown.

The reading order of the code is also _consistent,_ rather than the frequent switching between infix notation, prefix notation, and postfix notation which we have to learn and parse in most languages outside the Lisp family. This is a benefit which deceptively looks like it is _more_ complicated, despite being simpler to parse visually (and otherwise). Another example of the familiarity principle at work.

[tremon]

The funny thing is that it's _not_ more parentheses, roughly, than one would expect to find in any Algol/C-inspired language, like C# or JavaScript.

This tired trope needs to die. Yes, there are more parentheses, because lisp also uses parentheses where other languages use [] or {} or ;.

The real thing is that people from C-like languages are used to seeing different block markers for different constructs. It takes effort to read Lisp coming from other languages, because those other languages have a richer symbol vocabulary. Learning to read code without those symbols is like reading English where all punctuation has been replaced with a single space. Sure you ll get there eventually but it s a very cheap straw man argument to pretend that the only complaint people have about Lisps is the positioning of the parentheses.

[seanstrom]

Not a lisp apologist haha, but I think Clojure tries to use fewer smooth parens “()” in general. Square parens “[]” and curly parens “{}” are used to help with things like variable declarations and stuff like data structures.

I recently started using Clojure and I’ve used languages like C#, JavaScript, and Python a lot. My two cents is that a Clojure-like language should try to embrace the aesthetics of a white-space language like Python, but use the parens as clues for scopes or blocks. So much could be done with formatting rules that just make parens easier to scan without some extra IDE highlighting or something.

The best part of parens is that you can try to pick a consistent format, but ya know that sometimes doesn’t happen because everybody likes to use parens differently lol.

[jdrek1]

There are strictly more parentheses since other languages also use [] and {} (and <>) instead for different things. Or even ; or whitespace. Ignoring the majority of available brace types is just stupid if you ask me. The parentheses being at the wrong positions is something I can deal with (still no fan of RPN, but w/e), but intentionally crippling syntax that could help is just not a good idea. Syntax is your friend, use it.

[ravi-delia]

Janet also uses [] and {}, and there is a reason people like the really consistent syntax. For me that reason is blind aesthetics, but I swear to you I sincerely find lisp code easier to read than non-lisp code. It's not "intentionally crippling syntax" it's a genuine difference in taste.

[mypetocean]

Oh, I guess Markdown doesn't work. Huh. Well, shoot.

[tmtvl]

HN comment formatting options can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc