I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. Python was plenty familiar to programmers of the day, and there's a good argument that its success is only attributable to its English-like syntax insofar as it caused adoption into CS curricula (rather I think the lion's share of its success is due to its status as an early, cross-platform, approachable scripting language). Further, Ruby is successful solely because of Rails and JavaScript solely because of it's browser monopoly; not remotely because of any broken conventions.
My point isn't that novelty is antithetical to success, but that it's a terrible mistake to assume that 1) programmers of the future will be inherently familiar with math syntax and 2) these programmers at any point in time will significantly outnumber existing programmers such that the market dynamics favor laypersons over trained programmers.
> 1) it's a terrible mistake to assume that programmers of the future will be inherently familiar with math syntax
That's an excellent point, and more of an expansion of the argument than a retort! Perhaps math syntax is simply wrong and = has no place in either setting values or comparing them.
> 2) these programmers at any point in time will significantly outnumber existing programmers such that the market dynamics favor laypersons over trained programmers.
Java dominates CS introductions before Python did. Python would not have appealed to existing Javanauts. Yet Python now dominates CS introductions and many areas of programming. The market favoured a language that trained programmers did not.
> That's an excellent point, and more of an expansion of the argument than a retort! Perhaps math syntax is simply wrong and = has no place in either setting values or comparing them.
The issue isn't math syntax; it's comparing the population of all future novice programmers with the population of current programmers. The apt comparison is all future novice programmers who might be exposed to this hypothetical language to all experienced programmers who might be exposed to this language. Note that an "experienced programmer" might be someone born in 2018 who happened to have learned JavaScript2035 before seeing our new hypothetical language. The latter likely pool dwarfs the former. And this doesn't factor in that a language is a living thing--it needs a critical mass of users in order to survive, and the largest pool of potential users is existing programmers (very, very few early language adopters are first time users, I would wager). I think this is the retort I meant to make; I don't think this is merely an expansion of the topic, with sincere respect. :)
> Java dominates CS introductions before Python did. Python would not have appealed to existing Javanauts. Yet Python now dominates CS introductions and many areas of programming. The market favoured a language that trained programmers did not.
Apologies, I don't see how Python displacing Java in CS courses supports your point (or harms mine). Please elaborate.
My point isn't that novelty is antithetical to success, but that it's a terrible mistake to assume that 1) programmers of the future will be inherently familiar with math syntax and 2) these programmers at any point in time will significantly outnumber existing programmers such that the market dynamics favor laypersons over trained programmers.