Just a note to point out that infix like a+b*c in a conventional programming language
is not helpful if a,b,c are symbolic expressions.. Writing it as add(a, mul(b,c)) is not
a big deal, nor is writing it in lisp (add a (mul b c)). Of course you need to write programs
add and mul, but you have to do that regardless. Languages that are primarily oriented
to provide arithmetic on fixed-length integers or double-float numbers, mostly have to be
covered over by macros etc to do computer algebra. Languages like FORTRAN, Algol, C.
You could look at RLISP used for Reduce, if you want to see a version of lisp with "syntactic sugar"
to look "infix" ish. And that is used for a computer algebra system, Reduce.
There is something of a tradition, to hand to someone, perhaps someone
who prefers infix, a project to "Write a scanner/parser/code generator for an infix language
of your design [ or pick one, say Pascal]" in Lisp.
I've done this with programming language/compiler
undergraduate classes at Berkeley for decades, with probably thousands of students.
It takes 10 weeks, assuming you know no lisp, nothing about lexical analysis,
nothing about parsing, nothing about intermediate code generation. and maybe
nothing about Pascal.
At the completion of the project, most students prefer Lisp's parenthesized prefix.
They also understand Pascal better, having written an interpreter and compiler for it.
Often they choose to use Lisp for other projects, given a choice.
Most criticisms of Lisp come from people who have never used it, and it shows.
Complaints about too many parentheses. No, there are just exactly enough, and
your editor helps. Or indentation (hi Pythonistas). Editors indent for you, exactly right.
Not webby enough (see cl-http or other packages).
Too slow (uh, faster than Python, some excellent optimizing compilers for Lisp).
Too hard to learn. Think about how much time you spent in learning your current
favorite language on the precedence of operators. Or what the operators meant.
Or what happens when integers "overflow".
Consider learning Lisp.
Parts of Macsyma/Maxima are more like 60 years old. Almost as old as Lisp (circa 1959).
James Slagle's 1961 PhD on symbolic integration (SAI'NT) includes a substantial section explaining Lisp,
which was quite new at the time .