It's not shaming to say a language is ugly. Languages - like art - are open to subjectivity. You're arguing for objectivity towards Lisp/ClojureScript - so yes,

It's not shaming to say a language is ugly. Languages - like art - are open to subjectivity. You're arguing for objectivity towards Lisp/ClojureScript - so yes, you are acting in an elitist way. Should I encourage children to learn eye for an eye, simply because that's a way of thinking? Or would I be better to give them tools that make their world easier to comprehend and think for themselves? It's funny you brought up math - because children learn math at very early ages, and they progressively grow to understand more complicated math as they are able. The entire time the child is learning math, though. Math is the most basic instruction set that is used to count sides of a shape - all the way up to complicated thought experiments involving quantum mechanics. It is a semantic language that not only doesn't require a manual, it doesn't even require a theological conversation to apprehend it. So much so that when we attempt to communicate with life outside of our solar system, we use math to communicate with them. Why do scientists chose math over latin, or Russian? Because chosing a nationalist language would be dumb. Why would I chose to teach a language that obfuscates readability? Seems dumb.