If you squint a bit, macros and built-ins are similar in structure to functions (they're all s expressions).
I agree with much of what you said, but I still maintain that lisp syntax is still relatively trivial compared to most languages.
I also don't think exposing newcomers to macros on a language that is homoiconic is terribly useful until they're already comfortable with the basic s-expression syntax.
In lisp, nearly everything is written in the same form. I.e. everything either is a function call or looks like one. Once you know that, you pretty much know lisp syntax.
People freak out about the parens. But I think what's the big deal? Functions are called with the paren in front of the function and the args space separated.
so f(x, y) in C like syntax becomes: (f x y) - Whoop dee do, not so hard.
And since the syntax is extremely consistent, things that are math "operators" in other langs are just functions in lisp.
For "(+ 1 2 3)"
+ is actually the name of the function, so we are invoking + function and 1 2 3 are the arguments. Returns 6.
Once you know that, and that function args are evaluated before passed into the function, then you no longer have to worry about operator precedence and parenthesis to control order of operations. Once you get used to it, it's actually a lot simpler.
The style in lisp is to keep all the closing paren on the same line: ))))
But in java or C you’ll sometimes see a function that ends like: } } } }
(Hmm my newlines didn’t cone thru on those braces)
Not exactly apples to apples comparison, but it illustrates how you can start to unsee those parens.