I've not experienced that. I see the indentation more than the parens, in terms of looking at scopes. Browsing through the source code with the cursor highlig

I've not experienced that. I see the indentation more than the parens, in terms of looking at scopes. Browsing through the source code with the cursor highlights matching parens and directly shows which expression you're in. I do agree partially about the math, though. (+ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7) is easier to read for me than 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7, but most mixed-operation expressions are easier to human-read infix. S-expressions are also more explicit, eschewing punctuation for an AST representation of code. For example, a[2] becomes (aref a 2). Yes, this explicitness is more verbose, but because it's more regular I'd say it's easier to read when things get complex. However, once you taste the ability to programmatically generate source code right in your code itself, and that becomes part of your common workflow, the benefits of AST s-expressions blow away any of these relatively minor downsides. You can code in an idealized representation, then macro that ideal into actual executing code.