I haven't worked on a program that hijacked the core language functions in the Lisp I use (Clojure). So your concern seems odd to me, especially since you admi

I haven't worked on a program that hijacked the core language functions in the Lisp I use (Clojure). So your concern seems odd to me, especially since you admit you can do the same thing in C. That said, I only use it in my spare time and not for work, so my exposure is limited. Beyond that, your objections seem to be based upon familiarity. I had similar ones before I started using Clojure more often. I think the notation is just fine - it's not much different from imperative languages except they place the parenthesis in a different spot - I think it's more the nesting than the notation, which isn't a common tactic in imperative languages. I still use imperative languages during my day job so I can decipher imperative code easier, but I am much better at deciphering functional code than I used to be.