Lispers have been using structural editing since at least the 80s. Structural editing essentially allows modification to Lisp programs to be made as edits to a

Lispers have been using structural editing since at least the 80s. Structural editing essentially allows modification to Lisp programs to be made as edits to a data structure with tokens. It sounds radical but it's really quite simple, at least in a language like Lisp, where (setf x 5) is a piece of code that is truly and immediately represented by a data structure (a list containing the symbol SETF, the symbol X, and the number 5). Let's do a routine example. In your editor, how would you get from (f x (y|)) z to (f x y| z) if the '|' was your cursor? Maybe you think you should click around and delete the right parentheses, and carefully balance them. With structural editing, a Lisp programmer might first do a "splice": (f x (y|)) z ;; splice: press Alt+s (f x y|) z and then they will do a "slurp" (slang for moving the next thing after the cursor into the current enclosing parentheses): (f x y|) z ;; slurp: press Control-<right> (f x y| z) We've managed to get to our destination by using only two structural commands that makes a parenthesis-mismatch error fundamentally impossible. These are examples written with a package called "Paredit" in mind, and it actually makes editing Lisp a distinct joy compared to character-based editing of other languages. Some Lisp programmers prefer slightly different styles of structural editing, but they all reduce to the same motivations: Edit a Lisp program's structure, not its characters. So, contrary to popular belief, Lisp programmers do not count parentheses. Lisp programmers' eyes do not glaze over at the sight of Lisp. Syntax errors are probably a <1% occurrence out of all of the errors one encounters. Though purely informally empirical, I'd be willing to get that syntax errors are far less common in Lisp compared to syntax-rich languages like C++, Haskell, etc. People who dabble with Lisp for 15 minutes in notepad.exe invariably run into syntax errors, but that is not a reflection of what serious hobbyists and professional Lisp programmers do.