The syntax is very minimalistic at cost of much more semantical burden. Parsing Lisp code for humans often relies on conscious understanding the words and AST s

The syntax is very minimalistic at cost of much more semantical burden. Parsing Lisp code for humans often relies on conscious understanding the words and AST structure, not on reflexes tied to a visual memory of characters and indents. So I think that Lisps are at odds with human perception (someone may consider this an advantage: this repels people who code with their cerebellum instead of cerebral cortex). But once you have a picture of what is the code about in your head, it's not a big deal.