Indentation and semicolons don't impact the number of things your mind has to remember at one time. Nested classes are a problem as we're finally seeing with a bit of a backlash against OOP these days. XML is just markup and not a programming language so there's no "action" that needs to be carried around.

It's not the hierarchy itself that's the problem. The difficulty is remembering all that the hierarchy is doing before setting a chunk of it aside that causes the problem. Especially prefix trees.

> Indentation and semicolons don't impact the number of things your mind has to remember at one time.

I disagree. It didn't feel like impeding factor back in the day when I was writing Python, C#, Javascript, Typescript, etc. But working in Lisp I realized how many things I used to deal with, constantly shifting my focus to properly style, indent and punctuate the code so it would work and look easier to reason about.

Writing Lisp is more like writing poems without having to worry if it rhymes or not. You can write code just as you would draw prototypes on a piece of paper. Except you can evaluate any part of it without any preceding ceremony. Some prefer to start with smaller pieces and compose them, some would just write it "imperatively" and then break it apart. You don't have to worry about operator precedence, about reserved words, semicolons, all the unnecessary garbage. At the end of the day you realize - the visual garbage that's what it is. It supposed to make code more readable - but in reality it does not, it distracts more than helps. Human brain is fascinating, it plays tricks with you - once you see a dot in the middle of a visual illusion, you lose the ability to "unsee" it. But most people may still try to convince you that there is no dot.

While I disagree with you, your comment is both valid and well stated.