Other comments make it sound like dropping parentheses is just a craven attempt to make Racket more popular. To me, this epitomizes the distinction that the mai

Other comments make it sound like dropping parentheses is just a craven attempt to make Racket more popular. To me, this epitomizes the distinction that the maintainer drew between trying to get more popular, and lowering barriers of entry. If Racket 2 is no more popular (it loses as many community members as it gains), but the new community members had an easier time joining the community yet still love Racket 2 just as much as the old community loved Racket 1, isn't that still a win? Conversely, if it turns out that everyone loved Racket 1 not because of the design elements that the maintainer put so much blood, sweat, and tears into, but because of the high barrier of entry due to the parentheses (the one thing that the maintainer didn't put effort into), how is that at all motivating to the maintainer? I'm less of a community member and more of an admirer of Racket from a distance (and I don't mind parentheses, really, I've used Clojure professionally and it was great), but I look forward to seeing how this initiative turns out.