> the problem with Lisp is that it's sorta bundled with Emacs

What's the problems with Alive, SLT, Slyblime, and Vlime? I mean, I use Emacs, but I was using Emacs before getting into Scheme and CL anyway.

> Every website that teaches Lisp is in ugly HTML+CSS-only style

I dunno, I feel like the Community Spec (<https://cl-community-spec.github.io/pages/index.html>) and the Cookbook (<https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-cookbook/>) are fine.

> I like the philosophy of (s-exp) but modern lisps have ruined its simplicity for me by introducing additional bracket notations [like this].

Yes, that additional notation is a terrible blight on the perfection that is S-expressions, I wholeheartedly agree.

Can you elaborate? I like the extra context that square brackets give.

I just find it inconsistent. Lisp is (at least nominally) about processing lists, so I don't know why the list (foo bar baz) has to be different in:

  (if bar
      (foo bar baz)
      baz)

When contrasted to:

  (define-function quux [foo bar baz]
    ...)

If you use square brackets [x y z] as shorthand for round brackets (vector x y z), that's fine, but don't use them for basic syntactic elements.

I find square brackets quite useful for some kinds of expressions, that have multiple cases or branches. To make a visual difference there can help with readability.

I also find square brackets useful for other kinds of expressions, like Python-style list comprehensions. Though such syntax predates Python, e.g. there's a paper from 1991 https://3e8.org/pub/scheme/doc/lisp-pointers/v4i2/p16-lapalm... whose code still works in Common Lisp. If the language doesn't mandate that square brackets mean something, as Clojure does, then I can make them mean what I want that is convenient for my namespace, as Common Lisp allows. Whether that's data literals or special syntax or something like [x (x <- xs) (oddp x)] to filter out odds, it's nice to have that choice.

I use rainbow delimiters (colourful brackets) for that, but I can accept square brackets as an alternative for people who have issues with colour perception.

Most complaints against lisp predate all of the currently in use editors, though? More, it used to be a bit of the norm that everyone had their own editors. Dr Racket being in that vein.

Such that, sure, emacs can feel awkward. But the Arduino editor isn't exactly smooth. And my kids picked that up ok.

And a big plus on common lisp is that the older texts all still work.