If only Lisp had better presense in modern code editors. Emacs is not enough, especially on Windows where it is super slow. I think this is what actually stops newcomers to start with Lisp and not Python
What stops newcomers is knee-jerk reactions about the (lack of) syntax, it's scary to see something that doesn't look like Algol, because everyone who does mainstream programming uses Algol-like languages.
Introduce lisp to anyone who knows programming since earlier, and 99% of them will have a adverse reaction to s-expressions, before they understand what's going on. Once they understand, it makes a lot of sense obviously, but not everyone even has that kind of open mindset where they could understand if they wanted to.
You've almost convinced/nerd-sniped me to write a(nother) new lisp where we'll be using brackets for forms and lists and no parenthesis in sight. It's a wild theory.
I'm not sure that's true. Because Lisp has a lot of facilities for writing more concise code that are difficult to achieve without the parens.