I recall that early programming languages were designed to save money
(increase programmer supply) by opening the door to less skilled
programmers. A natural way to attempt this is by offering them an
interface similar to what they've already encountered in school. Like
highschool math notation, for instance.

But what happens when we stray from highschool textbook Fibonacci
implementations? Some languages look great for solving Tower of Hanoi,
but not so enviable in other domains. This is why people look towards
"domain specific languages," and Lisp creeps into the conversation.

Now despite all this, Lisp DOES respect other traditions. Observe LOOP,
which is like every for(;;) loop in every language rolled into one.
Dirty and rewarding, the sort of thing which probably makes Haskellers
and MLers scream indignantly. Also, there are infix parsers and whatnot
floating around the net, for when conventional syntax is appropriate.

Lisp is different, there's no question about that. It may be outflanked
in specific areas; and today's Common Lisp is simply one little
milestone in its evolution. Once, it was believed that an M-expression
syntax would replace the current S-expressions, but many liked sexps.
In the future, and given enough funding, we can wishfully predict human
interface improvements where IDEs project Lisp code in some
conventional way to the user, just as webpages don't look like HTML
markup.

Or perhaps sexps lead the way to a more sensible syntax than the weaker
one which mathematicians developed. Many claim that Newton's calculus
notation is less flexible than Leibniz's, and no doubt various number
systems have varying disadvantages. Perhaps Fermat's margin wouldn't
have been a problem if he had Lisp macros.