I have yet to see any data that supports ANY programming syntax as easier to learn or in any way a good thing. Knowing a few C-style languages, a few lisp styl

I have yet to see any data that supports ANY programming syntax as easier to learn or in any way a good thing. Knowing a few C-style languages, a few lisp style languages, and a few ML style languages, I have found unsurprisingly that the language I'm using most becomes the easiest to read. But since all we have is anecdotia and talks about our feelings, cracks knuckles, I'll give my two cents. I think ML style is the easiest to _learn_ to read. It's sparse, simple, and almost always obvious. It's probably my favorite to read, and I usually find myself able to read it quickly. My favorite to write and edit is a lisp style. With paredit and vim, I feel like I can edit code effortlessly. Every time I'm back in a C or ML descendant, I find I'm always wishing I could easily grab this expression or that parameter, and whoops, don't forget that comma there, nope this line it is a semicolon, nope this line it's a period. The irregular shape of the code with a different character for each concept (period for chained method call, comma for chained list or argument, semicolon for end of line, etc) makes it very hard to edit quickly. With so many different representations it is hard to add keyboard macros to help you structure code. Specifically, in C# and JS, I always feel like I'm just pounding the text like a blacksmith, with sparks of commas, periods, semicolons, colons, brackets, square brackets, and angle brackets flying around. With lisps, it's usually just parens, and with paredit and Vim's in/a parens commands, they mostly work for me, not against me. That same simplicity of representation is why macros are so fluid and simple in lisps. Can macros exist in other styles? Theoretically, yes, but all the issues I mentioned would be barriers in the way.