Although I'm a recovering sexp addict I must confess that I fail to see what makes the cons cell so important to those purer in their faith?

To me the homoiconity of Lisp is mainly about code-as-data, the exact nature of the data doesn't matter to me that much as long as it's a first class citizen and enclosed in nicely balanced parenthesis (though sadly here Janet seems to have fallen to the temptations of the curly braces, and thus, is indeed heresy).

I chuckled at "recovering sexp addict". What possible risk is there in over-indulging in sexp?! I simply don't see it.

Speaking of unconventional lisps, I enjoyed this recently:

https://github.com/vygr/ChrysaLisp/blob/master/docs/lisp/lis...

from Chris Hinsley, author of the (very) cool Chrysalisp operating system. Same author who wrote this in 1995:

http://www.uruk.org/emu/Taos.html

I am a heretic, but I agree that it seems the power of code as data can exist outside a linked list.

I will not give up my curly braces or square brackets.