[wonderzombie]

I don't think I've heard anyone argue that homiconicity makes Lisp easier to learn. I would characterize that as an advanced concept— it only becomes relevant once you start learning about macros.

As far as Lisp's syntax itself, the lack of special cases means there's less to learn. Myself, I like some of the sugar you get in Clojure for hashes, vectors, sets, etc.

As for macros themselves, ostensibly you don't need to know the implementation details of every macro any more than you need to understand what executing a Java method does in terms of JVM bytecode. In practice sometimes you'll goof up and try to map a macro over a list. Depending on your Lisp implementation, the mistake should be obvious. And depending on your editor, it may even highlight some or all macros differently.

Also, Racket also has a different approach than some of the Lisp reader manipulation you see in Common Lisp. We're getting outside my familiarity here though.