My understanding is that the square-bracket notation is just a reader macro to provide syntax sugar. Now, I know Clojure doesn't expose reader macros to the en

My understanding is that the square-bracket notation is just a reader macro to provide syntax sugar. Now, I know Clojure doesn't expose reader macros to the end user, but you could achieve the same syntax in CL without too much hassle (http://dorophone.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/common-lisp-reader-macros-simple.html http://dorophone.blogspot.co.uk/2008/03/common-lisp-reader-m... for something similar). I don't think it's necessarily reasonable to criticise it for baking in a choice you could quite happily make in CL. EDIT: "Criticise" is clearly the wrong word, since your description isn't perjorative. "Distinguish" would be better.