[tmtvl]

I mean, double quotes and curly brackets also require using the Shift key, as do the at sign, number sign, dollar sign, and ampersand. The brackets are a small enough part of the code that it doesn't matter.

And besides:

  print("Hello World");

requires just as much chording as:

  (print "Hello World")

[amenhotep]

Mostly these days it just requires that you start to type "print" and then press tab when appropriate, though. I feel like I relatively rarely type brackets manually for function calls. Lisp syntax doesn't seem amenable to this particular affordance?

[tmtvl]

Why not? Could just type 'print', TAB, and have it put brackets and spaces in the right positions and leave the cursor in place for the first argument.

[iroddis]

That’s true, but the travel distance of the braces or the double quotes from the home row is much less than the travel distance from the parentheses. Just using shift isn’t the problem, it’s how far parens are from the normal hand position.

[tmtvl]

> That’s true, but the travel distance of the braces or the double quotes from the home row is much less than the travel distance from the parentheses.

That... depends on your keyboard maybe? On Dvorak the curly brackets are harder to reach than the round brackets. The open round bracket is also hit with the ring finger instead of the little finger, which is weaker.