[throwaway81523]

> If you squint enough, JS is a lisp..

Yes, that is true. I'm not big on the idea that Lisp is defined by parentheses. The implementation strategies are another way to look at it. That doesn't capture it either, but it's an angle to try.

[pjmlp]

It isn't, Dylan and Julia are two Lisps with Algol like syntax.

Indeed there was a proposal to add Algol like syntax to Lisp,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LISP_2

[gf000]

So then what it is? Because otherwise it's a magical nothing-term to which everything lisp people like applies, but no criticism can ever reach it because "that's not really lisp, see it's different in this other implementation"

[Pay08]

In my mind, it's 2 distinct criteria: interactivity and the manipulation of symbols (whether those are implemented as symbols or identifiers doesn't really matter). I don't know about Erlang, but from the admittedly little JS I've written, I believe it achieves both criteria, even if it's worse at them than a "proper" Lisp.