> For humans, ignoring quoted parens is maybe easier, but i would say it's a flex to assert that you can tell if (3,(g(f('('),x))) is balanced at a glance.

True, but mentally balancing parentheses is usually something that you do while writing the code: you pushpop a little stack in your head and this becomes second nature.

Mentally verifying if parentheses are balanced while reading code is hardly ever required. You can usually safely assume that they are (unless that darn compiler tells you otherwise).