I've spent a lot of time over the years trying to get used to Lispy and Forth-like languages, and the syntax is a much greater barrier than you think.

Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with. There's further centuries of experience with what people find readable in natural language. People seem to infer a lot more information from layout and structure than some seem to think.

But there is a split there between those who are fine with dense syntax and those who are not. Lisp, Forth, and many functional languages fall in a category that tend to be popular with people who also e.g. find mathematical notation straightforward and are happy to decipher symbol after symbol.

But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax. I can remember pages of code I saw 20-30 years ago by the overall shape of he code, and layout, and even the font, but if I'm asked to recall code by a sequence of tokens I had to read token by token, I'd draw a blank over code I saw days ago.

That's why you see languages like e.g. Ruby, that in themselves bring very little new on the semantics side, but that popularise ideas from other languages (e.g. Smalltalk, Self for Ruby, along with a lot of syntactical baggage from Perl).

In recent years a lot of ideas have been lifted from Lisp, but some of them are linked quite closely to Lisps syntax. We've started seeing languages tackle this, but it's still a tricky balance to get right.

But I think Forth lacks a language that can do this for it. Retaining the ideas of Forth while making it readable to a bigger audience seems like a hard problem, but it's been (reasonably well) tackled for Smalltalk and Lisp. That's what piqued my interested with your experiment.

> Most languages look pretty much the same because we do have half a century of experience with what people get comfortable with.

I think it's more about familiarity rather than any inherent quality of the syntax itself.

> But for many of us, being able to instantly get an overview is a visual process that requires more distinct syntax.

I think colour and shape can go a long way here, too — and that applies to both Forth & Lisp.

Or choice of symbols and identifiers. People love to bash Perl, but Larry is definitely on to something when it comes to names and symbols, however flawed/misused the implementation in Perl may be; I feel like we're chasing the same ghosts.

An example is Snabels use of "|" for resetting the stack, "_" for dropping the top and "(..)" for grouping modifications; it smells a tiny bit like Perl in that it's not afraid of using what's available to get the wanted experience, but has a dramatic effect on code shape compared to regular mumble-Forth.

I guess you could say we've had similar experiences, I wouldn't be this motivated to find another way if I thought Lisp or Forth was the final answer either. Or Smalltalk, I was really excited about Strongtalk for a while. I've had this gut feeling for a long, long time that it's quite possible to add more structure without taking away the power; and doing it in Forth proves the point.

I like both lisp and forth, but also think more syntax is useful for humans - both lisp and forth essentially demand that you program in ASTs directly, rather than some higher level abstraction/more pleasant.... Typography? Advanced semantic grammar?

I'm not sure the ease of macro implementation is worth it. I'd love to see more efforts like Dylan. Or different kind of simplicity, like Smalltalk.

You're not alone in still mourning Dylan...

But the more code I write, the more I appreciate languages that stay out of my way until I ask for help; besides Lisp & Forth that basically means C/C++. Elaborate syntax, no matter how convenient; will always become an obstacle at some point. You might think it's funny to see C++ in that list, but these days its possible to use it as a static Common Lisp with crippled macros; Snabels implementation is a testament to that.

I was deeply in love with the idea of Smalltalk for a long time, but big pieces of code turn spongy on me as soon as I pass a certain level of complexity. I need more types than that, which is why Snabel had parameterized types from day one.

A reminder to others, and a note-to-self that readable-lisp exists:

http://wiki.c2.com/?SweetExpressions

The wiki page makes a valid point; seemingly heavy lisp users will argue against non-s-expression syntax, but happily use prefix notation for quote, and infix for pairs...