if only programmers cared about functionality as much as syntax we'd be living in a lisp heaven

You need some sort of critical majority that cares about deeper aspects of whatever (over superfice) or else everyone focuses on superfice, as that's what all the public debates are about.

But lacking that, lisp could improve its syntax (did that, BTW not hard, just added some containers and a few standard infix operators, which all compile to lists).