Ruby, Python, and in the game-dev world, Lua have become quite popular without curly brackets and semicolons. I don't think syntax is all that critical to a lan

Ruby, Python, and in the game-dev world, Lua have become quite popular without curly brackets and semicolons. I don't think syntax is all that critical to a language becoming popular[0]. What does matter is that it solves an immediate problem that simply isn't being solved by other languages, or is attached to a framework or tool that does so. Python got popular because it was a more readable replacement for Perl. Ruby got popular because it was used for a framework that eliminated half the work from the average web app[1]. [0] With certain limitations. A painful syntax will keep people away, and it remains to be seen whether Lisp is painful enough to most programmers to prevent adoption when a language otherwise solves all their problems. [1] Compared to PHP, Java or just about any language with CGI and a hand-rolled data access layer.