> well JavaScript if you're willing to buy into the idea that it's scheme in c syntax, which isn't actually that far off.
It is quite far off. Just look at the version of "SICP in Javascript" (of which Julie Sussman was even one of the authors). The important points of the book are obscured by all the boilerplate and workarounds for the poor expressivity of the language.
Could it be that JS has poor expressivity for the concepts discussed in SICP, but good expressivity as a general scripting language[0]? Same thing for Python.
[0] And conversely, Scheme doesn't have good expressivity as a scripting language.
Given Lisp Machines and Interlisp-D, I would state the issue with Scheme is more related to lack of tooling.
Scheme has better expressivity (or more expressive power if you want to put it that way) but there’s a higher gain mismatch between its syntax and the things people usually script these days.
Scripting languages are tightly coupled to the language they are scripting.
But no, genuine lisps come with parentheses (or some equivalent) because, as the name suggests, the entire point is list processing. Lisp programs are just data without (much) syntax. The more syntax you add, the less of a lisp it is.