It looks like it's a Lisp or Lisp-like, but with some features I haven't seen in other Lisps: pattern matching; currying-by-default; a built-in type system; and so on. IOW it seems like if Lisp and Haskell had a baby.
I'll admit that, having studied Haskell before Lisp, I really, really like pattern matching. But I don't think this would be enough for me to pick up Shen; I'd probably go with Clojure if I wanted a Lisp.
There's some talk about the motivation here: http://www.shenlanguage.org/motivation.html.
I'll admit that, having studied Haskell before Lisp, I really, really like pattern matching. But I don't think this would be enough for me to pick up Shen; I'd probably go with Clojure if I wanted a Lisp.