I'm perfectly well aware that the difference is only in how names are resolved into values, and not in the values themselves. This is a distinction that doesn't matter to most people. What they care most about is what they have to type to convince the compiler to do what they want, and when there are exceptional circumstances that make them think harder or remember more details.
Telling explicitly what one wants to do actually helps the compiler and it helps with the maintenance. The compiler then can help me to find calls which are just accidents, name clashes, etc.
In a Lisp-2 in the expression (sin 2) then SIN is always a function name. It can't be anything else. It's not possible to bind a name in the function namespace to a non-function (or macro).
Using something like FUNCALL is a clear sign that a function value is being called. This makes the source code longer, but it helps me to understand the code even months/years later.
Personally I don't think the distinction between Lisp-1 and Lisp-2 is a very important one, in terms of practical engineering. I just wish I could use any Lisp more often; Lisp-1 vs Lisp-2 doesn't really enter in to it.
Now, I have to go back to working on this Automake/Autoconf mess I'm working on. mumble mumble M4 mumble...
