Once you get to doing real tasks, I think that this is very definitely true. However, from my experience TAing intro programming classes (2 of them, both targe

Once you get to doing real tasks, I think that this is very definitely true. However, from my experience TAing intro programming classes (2 of them, both targeted at non-CS majors) the syntax is still a huge roadblock for a lot of people when they're learning to program. When they're learning, a lot of people spend so much time worrying about the syntax ("how do I write it?") that they don't get to the much more important "how do I solve the problem?" without a lot of prompting.