Lisp, as McCarthy proposed it in 1958, actually had an alternate syntax called M-expressions that would be perfectly readable to any JavaScript programmer: (foo a b) became foo[a,b].
It never took off. From the earliest days -- before video terminals were a thing, let alone video-terminal editors that could match parens and indent automatically -- people just preferred working with sexprs. I think it has to do with the fact that while mexprs are easier to read with prior ALGOL experience, sexprs are easier to transform, and to reason about their transformation.
I think Lisp is one of those things where, you either get it or you don't, and once you do get it parens are a non-issue. There's a fundamental leap of insight that requires enormous activation energy to achieve.
It never took off. From the earliest days -- before video terminals were a thing, let alone video-terminal editors that could match parens and indent automatically -- people just preferred working with sexprs. I think it has to do with the fact that while mexprs are easier to read with prior ALGOL experience, sexprs are easier to transform, and to reason about their transformation.
I think Lisp is one of those things where, you either get it or you don't, and once you do get it parens are a non-issue. There's a fundamental leap of insight that requires enormous activation energy to achieve.