their decision to get rid of the s-expression based syntax
I thought it was a joke but it isn't. Now I understand why my gut feeling had always kept me away from Racket.
It doesn't matter, there's no real lack of good implementations with useful ecosystems. Guile 3.0 has been released in January. There's Gambit-C (and Gerbil) and a few others that I have yet to try.