> The seq abstraction, for example, means I usually don’t have to worry about what kind of sequence I’m dealing with

Eh? That's completely lifted from CL (https://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/t_seq...). Same for AREF/NTH, there's ELT.

Other than that, I agree, CL is baroque yet needs some hole filling here and there.

> Lisp: everything is a list

But that's wrong. Not even a little. Unless you mean LISP 1.5...

> Too much syntax

Funnily, I'm mostly okay with the new vector/set/hash-table literals, my big problem and that of some other people is the use of vectors in macros/special operators instead of lists. `(let [a b] ...)` instead of `(let (a b) ...)` is _not_ okay.