I say the opposite. Lisp's regularity allows the qualities of the program itself to emerge visually. It's amazing how fine-tuned an intuition one develops after

I say the opposite. Lisp's regularity allows the qualities of the program itself to emerge visually. It's amazing how fine-tuned an intuition one develops after a while for code one's looking at when its structure isn't distorted by extraneous demands of the language. In Lisp, I find I am frequently (and often subliminally) processing visual cues to figure out what I'm looking at, prior to parsing what the text says, which is a slower thing to do. Actually, you get the same effect in any language. You can tell a lot about, say, a Java program by printing it out, sticking the printout on a wall, and walking back 10 feet. But Lisp's regularity makes this effect richer, more powerful, and workable-with at much smaller scale. Unfamiliarity reactions are not properties of the unfamiliar thing. When you walk into a space that is brighter or darker than what your eyes are used to, you can't see as well. This does not mean the space "lacks visual cues".