I did most of the 2023 Advent of Code using Janet and it was a great experience. I forced myself to use PEGs as much as possible, even when it was overkill, and I really began to like those for the readability and ease compared to other parsers/regexps that I have used.

I like that it is a small language without dependencies. Have it installed everywhere, including in termux on my phone. Good for scripting.

Used to daydream about a native Clojure and Janet is close enough to that. Does not have everything, but the cost in size and dependencies is so much lower. It is simpler and easier and runs well even on a RPi Zero.

A native clojure? have you seen jank?

https://jank-lang.org/