Here's how the creator of Lisp explained -- in 1978 -- why Lisp still  
had Lots of Irritating Silly Parenthesis:

   "Another reason for the initial acceptance of awkwardnesses in the  
internal form of LISP is that we still expected to switch to writing  
programs as M-expressions [infix format]. The project of defining M- 
expressions precisely and compiling them or at least translating them  
into S-expressions was neither finalized nor explicitly abandoned. It  
just receded into the indefinite future, and a new generation of  
programmers appeared who preferred internal notation to any FORTRAN- 
like or ALGOL-like notation that could be devised."

Now, one could look at the acceptance of Smalltalk and the acceptance  
of Lisp and say, "See, the appearance DOES matter!" On the other  
hand, there HAVE been plenty of examples where an attempt to make  
Lisp syntax more "normal" and "acceptable to the enterprise software  
community" have not made a dent. On the third hand, one might argue  
that Java....

Well anyway, I think the parallels are interesting.
-H