&gt;  I was referring to &quot;newcomers&quot;, as just people new to LISP, and not complete newcomers to programming languages.<p>Sure, but not all newcomers to lisp that are familiar with programming are people that whose programming experience is tightly tied to Algol-family languages. For me, Lisp wasn&#x27;t any more unwelcoming than any other new languages when I encountered it well into my experience with programming, but a number of languages I encountered much earlier in my programming life (BASIC, Forth, Logo, x86 ASM, among others) weren&#x27;t Algol-family languages.