Syntax used in a sentence

Syntax in a sentence as a noun

But instead it has this weird syntax, which it then doesn't really do that much with.

I think R still probably has the most concise syntax for this task.

If Erlang was written with an Algol-esque syntax it would have taken off years ago.

Quote-based syntax doubles annoyance of this pointless task.

PHP succeeds because there is one PHP templating syntax and it is called "PHP".PHP started life as a templating language, and that's where its soul lies.

With a syntax highlighter your mind still has a hard time as there isn't enough of a difference to make a subconscious context switch easy.

It would mean I would not be juggling little peculiarities of arcane syntax, such as which sed flags to invoke, or whether to use exec or xargs.

You just need to get over Pascal-style syntax instead of C-style, and you are just as productive in it as if you were using C#.Why is delphi still hanging on?1.

Same thing with using "BDD" testing frameworks like RSpec vs. traditional assert stuff, what is the nice syntax worth if tricky bugs hit you where you most want to avoid it, in tests.

In general I think those considerations would benefit from distinguishing a bit more between syntax and semantics.

Lisp does things with its bizarre syntax, making it obvious how to write correct macros and being homoiconic, which translates poorly back into Algol-esque infix languages.

For one, some sort of syntax or type checker is actually trying to understand your queries and makes it easy to find typos before the database laments in the middle of a huge transaction.

It's almost inconceivable that one could translate a concatenative program back into Algol-esque syntax [2].

Normally, I'm skeptical of "change the syntax and your life will magically get better, no matter how headachey interacting with the rest of the world will become", but then Thomas showed me Sass and it was lifechanging.

Haskell has a radically different syntax, but it does things with that syntax and its pervasive currying to enable a powerful succinctness that one can not imagine being translated back into the Algol-esque framework.

* Since the majority of JavaScript syntax is intended to mimic Java syntax, which does require semicolons to separate statements, semicolons blend well with the language, and are therefore nice and idiomatic.

Language extension usually works this way: a previously unambiguously wrong statement is made valid; but JS semicolon insertion often turns "wrong" statements into "correct" statements, so it leaves less "entropy" to be taken advantage of when increasing the power of the syntax.