https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15525570

That thread is emblematic of newcomers to Lisp. That person posts a reasonable experience report about how parenthesis were a problem for him getting started. Is subsequently downvoted and receives dozens of replies to "just use emacs".

Also "just use the REPL more". So unhelpful and completely misses the point of his query / problem.

ive been hearing the "clojure has less parens than other langs" response lately. thats not really working for people

its a fact, but perception is a real thing as well

for example, no game designer would blame a perception problem on the player. it's the designer's job to make sure perception aligns appropriately

that's how i feel when people tell newcomers of lisp to ignore what they see because theyre just not seeing it right