I think what the author is trying to say is that expressiveness and "managing hard problems" are a level of abstraction above syntax and paradigms. I concede th

I think what the author is trying to say is that expressiveness and "managing hard problems" are a level of abstraction above syntax and paradigms. I concede that it's a bit hyperbolic to say it's "not about" the latter, but I'd argue that they're less important than their intent, i.e. what the syntax is designed to express. For example, Golang's channel syntax would be a lot less useful if it were just a weird synchronous assignment operator, instead of an abstraction over a concurrent operation.