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I think the semantics of the language is also important.

Yes. I suppose I’m arguing here that the importance of semantics is much greater than the importance of syntax. It’s not that syntax doesn’t matter, but these days I find myself much more concerned with what features a programming language offers than exactly what they look like.

A ternary operator in a C like language probably is frustrating because it's some magic that was just shoehorned into the language with no rhyme or reason behind it.

I’m not sure I can agree with that. The big difference between the ternary-if operator and if-else statements in the C family languages is that the former is used in expressions while the latter is used with statements. Sometimes that distinction is useful.




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