> Precisely.
Enabling macros is the sole justification for the homoiconic syntax, which is often cited as the most offputting feature of lisps for uptake by large programmer teams. If you're going to have two "editions" of Clojure, one with the full feature set for language designers, and the other a more restricted sans-defmacro one for more general programmer use, then why not give that restricted one a more friendly syntax as well, or even just get them to use Java, Python, or whatever.