This, on the other hand, is perfectly legible if you know the language. I'd say it's even perfectly legible if you don't, but how would I know?

There are a couple good examples in there of what I said in another comment, about how, quite aside from getting the hang of reading and writing sexprs, one also has to learn a rather more foreign discipline of building up linked lists in the idiomatic way. Which is a greater barrier than learning to read `(and foo bar)` as `foo && bar`. That part really doesn't take long.

I'm having fun with Typescript these days, but parentheses are what I miss most from my Scheme days. They're objectively better.