What is or isn't readable can be judged by two qualities. The first one is if it's being familiar to what you're used to and the second one how long it takes to learn if you're not familiar with it.
Now I learned C-like language before I learned Lisp-like languages, so that might be the reason I felt I understood Lisp way faster than I felt I understand C-like languages. There is simply less to learn about the language and more to learn about conventions, while C-like languages always have bunch of extra syntax you have to learn, otherwise the compiler cries.
> Other disadvantages include lack of typing & poor tooling support
Not sure these are inherent to Lisps. There are plenty of typed lisps, and even the ones that don't have types, can have types added to them after the fact, just because they are Lisps.
Regarding tooling, I'd say that the entire C-like ecosystem is far behind any Lisp language regarding tooling. I mainly see people using "println"'s for debugging, and sometimes using a "line debugger", while Lisp developers modify their code at runtime and have a far more advanced debugger, something C-like languages will probably never do as well as Lisp-like languages does it, again because of s-expressions and the code they make you write.
> What is or isn't readable can be judged by two qualities. The first one is if it's being familiar to what you're used to and the second one how long it takes to learn if you're not familiar with it.
So your argument is that all code is as easy to read as long as you have done the work to get familiar with it? I hope you understand that it is bullshit. Brainfuck isn't easier to understand than python no matter how much time you spend with brainfuck.
No, that is not my argument. I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself well enough for everyone to understand.
My point is that "readability" is composed by many factors, not just one. What is "readable" to some will not be "readable" by others. It depends.
For someone who knows Fortran, learning a Fortran-like language is easy (like C or JS). For someone who knows Common Lisp, Clojure is easy. But for someone who knows Fortran, Clojure is less familiar, hence the code will, on a glance, look less "readable".
The other factor is if something is "simple" by itself.
Most of this view comes from Rich Hickey, who wrote Clojure. He discusses "readability" or "simplicity" rather, in his talk "Simple Made Easy". If you haven't seen it before, do yourself a favor and watch it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
He'll explain it much better, and with further points, much better than I ever can.
> Brainfuck isn't easier to understand than python no matter how much time you spend with brainfuck.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but I actually wonder how true that is. If you spent years working in Brainfuck, and had never touched Python, I suspect it would take a bit of effort before Python was as readable to you as Brainfuck.
Now I learned C-like language before I learned Lisp-like languages, so that might be the reason I felt I understood Lisp way faster than I felt I understand C-like languages. There is simply less to learn about the language and more to learn about conventions, while C-like languages always have bunch of extra syntax you have to learn, otherwise the compiler cries.
> Other disadvantages include lack of typing & poor tooling support
Not sure these are inherent to Lisps. There are plenty of typed lisps, and even the ones that don't have types, can have types added to them after the fact, just because they are Lisps.
Regarding tooling, I'd say that the entire C-like ecosystem is far behind any Lisp language regarding tooling. I mainly see people using "println"'s for debugging, and sometimes using a "line debugger", while Lisp developers modify their code at runtime and have a far more advanced debugger, something C-like languages will probably never do as well as Lisp-like languages does it, again because of s-expressions and the code they make you write.