The funny thing is that it's _not_ more parentheses, roughly, than one would expect to find in any Algol/C-inspired language, like C# or JavaScript.

The opening paren is simply relocated to the other side of the function name or keyword.

What we're experiencing is just a cognitive bias which causes us to prefer the more familiar over the less familiar ([the mere-exposure effect, also called the familiarity principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect)).

I've never used a Lisp-family language, but I find the reaction against parentheses to be overblown.

The reading order of the code is also _consistent,_ rather than the frequent switching between infix notation, prefix notation, and postfix notation which we have to learn and parse in most languages outside the Lisp family. This is a benefit which deceptively looks like it is _more_ complicated, despite being simpler to parse visually (and otherwise). Another example of the familiarity principle at work.