This misses one point when comparing Lisp to languages like Ruby. Lisp does not have infix notation. Therefore, you never have to worry that "foo-bar" (the symbol) could ever be confused with "foo - bar” the operation subtracting bar from foo. That’s because in Lisp, foo-bar is written "(- foo bar).”
Since a Lisp programmer spends all his time writing "(- foo bar),” when he sees “foo-bar,” his brain easily parses it as a symbol, and he never needs to wonder whether it should actually have been “foo - bar” with spaces to separate the infix operator from the symbols representing variables.
Since a Lisp programmer spends all his time writing "(- foo bar),” when he sees “foo-bar,” his brain easily parses it as a symbol, and he never needs to wonder whether it should actually have been “foo - bar” with spaces to separate the infix operator from the symbols representing variables.