You mind it mostly because the Lisp funcall/lambda syntax is complex. Contrast with Smalltalk, which lacks special forms, and does use lambdas to get short cir

You mind it mostly because the Lisp funcall/lambda syntax is complex. Contrast with Smalltalk, which lacks special forms, and does use lambdas to get short circuiting: someBoolean ifTrue: [ 'it was true' ] ifFalse: [ 'it was false' ] Brackets introduce lambdas. I don't find this syntax clunky, and while I've never wanted to map ifTrue:/ifFalse: before, it's nice to be able to write your own special-form-like operators this way.