Comment by lispm

Maybe because they don't understand it.

Lisp has syntax. More than any other programming language.

What you think Lisp syntax is, are really simple function calls like

    (+ 1 2)

which are based on the function + various args pattern.

But something like Common Lisp has a few dozen syntactic built-in forms. For example the syntax for LET is in an EBNF (extended backus naur form) form:

     let ({var | (var [init-form])}*) declaration* form*

Then Lisp has macros. Zillions. Each of them implements syntax.

Lisp has a two-stage syntax:

1. stage are s-expressions, a data format: symbols, numbers, lists, strings, ...

2. stage are Lisp forms. They are written as s-expressions. But they have to follow a defined syntax. not every s-expression is a valid Lisp form.

  (let ((a 1) (b 2))
    (declare (integer a b))
    (+ a b))

Above is a valid LET form.

  (let ((a 1) (b 2))
    (+ a b)
    (declare (integer a b)))

Above is not a valid LET form, because the syntax requires that the optional declaration is directly after the binding form.

Without parentheses it might look like:

  let (a 1) (b 2)
    declare integer a b
    a + b

You would think that it has a syntactic structure. Just because Lisp uses s-expressions as a base mechanism, does not mean Lisp has no syntactic structure - but it is on top of s-expressions.

Since Lisp has user-programmable syntax, there is basically an unlimited amount of all kinds of syntactical constructs.