[zaphar]

I think that generalizing from your own personal experience is probably a bad idea here. I personally learn syntax very easily probably because I place very little emphasis on syntax and far more on semantics. However I have met people who place a lot of emphasis on syntax. For them the syntax of a language is a large hindrance.

I suspect there are people for whom syntax has a large impact on productivity. Especially when first getting familiar with a language. I don't think downplaying that is wise.

[klibertp]

It's much more complex than that. Learning new syntax, for example, is completely different beast than actually using the syntax. Syntax has non-trivial - and rarely understood - influence on code readability and language idioms. Constructs with syntactic support tend to see more usage than the "bare" features - it takes a language as impoverished as JavaScript to convince people that they don't need syntactic sugar to use those features. Language syntax affects tooling to a great extent. And so on.

So, in short: syntax does matter, although in a different way than most people think.

On the other hand, people who are fixated on some syntax should just stop. Writing a couple of lexers/parsers helps here. Knowing different kinds - of flavours - of syntax helps even more. Syntax does matter, but not nearly as much as such people seem to think.

[vezzy-fnord]

The point is Erlang's syntax is something of a joke for whatever reason, so I figured I'd offer a counterexample.

Honestly I see it as just slightly less juvenile than "Lost In Stupid Parentheses".