[skydhash]

What I think he means is that when you program, you take terms that has specific meanings (in whatever abstract machine the compiler/interpreter embodies) and arrange them according to the rules in order to describe the steps of a solution so that the machine can solve it automatically. The syntax are not that actually important, you can compose new terms from basic terms and create a language that way. You abstract that way, expanding or reducing the vocabulary you have to work with, finding some specific relations between the term that facilitates describing (paradigms). Syntax is important because the machine only understand those specific terms arranged in those specific ways. It just that the set of problem it can solve is very large, the solutions more so, and your program is just only one element. Solving the problem is not programming, restricting it to what the machine can do is. And for that syntax is what you got, because that's what the machine accept.