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Ok, let's compare looping

    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
        printf("%d\n", i);
    }

    (loop for i from 0 below 5
          do (format t "~A~%" i))

C has the same number of parentheses and also has curly brackets. C additionally has a bunch of semicolons and a comma not present in the Lisp version. The C version is also omitting the required function encapsulation to actually run this, while the Lisp version can be run as a top level expression.

The comparison really isn't even close. If you really want, you can always put the trailing )) on new lines like people do with the trailing }}}} for their nested if in a for in a method in a class in C-like languages. The Lisp community has just decided that putting single characters on new lines like that is needlessly noisy and emphasizes characters that are easily ignored by humans and instead manipulated using structural editing.

bmacho 3 days ago [ - ]

> The comparison really isn't even close.

IMO it's close. Lisp isn't much worse than other languages. Tho it needs special syntax for some common constructs. It helps the human.

Regarding the for loop, if you only loop one statement, you do

    for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) printf("%d\n", i);

If you loop several statements, you do

  (loop for i from 0 below 5
        do (progn
           (format t "~A~%" i)
           (format t "~A~%" i)))

again, lisp lacks the syntax to group several statements together. In C it ends with );} , indicating a function call inside a control flow or a block. In lisp ))) can be anything from function definition to assigning variables or arrays/collections or anything.