In the last week, I've done this 2 or 3 times: I've opened some Clojure/CLJS file of mine in a text editor, did a search-and-replace of all open- and close-parens to a single space.

Then I ask if they've seen Python before, to which most say 'yes', and I say, 'there you go, it's Python now'. And I can immediately see the look of surprise when they see that _similarity_, because the similarity is then hard to unsee!

I recommend that trick to any others trying to open minds and challenge preconceived notions in their surroundings. :-)

Side note: I've made the point that nested SQL expressions have many nested parens, too, which we've all done. And that the sum of parens+brackets+braces is similar to other languages, just the distribution is different. Neither of those 2 arguments work as well -- I guess because it's not visual and striking?