That's neither my point nor OP's point. The soothing feeling of "this text has a comfortably familiar shape" is entirely about syntax, and indeed is only a soot

That's neither my point nor OP's point. The soothing feeling of "this text has a comfortably familiar shape" is entirely about syntax, and indeed is only a soothing feeling because such programmer has not seen anything beyond it and is unwilling to get outside that comfort zone. I do not hire anything who does not get outside of their comfort zone or who is intimated by syntax they haven't seen. If a programmer rejects Haskell or OCaml by giving me a good critique of say, Hindley Milner style type systems†, that's a good programmer I'm willing to hire even though I don't necessarily agree. †: I've been asked exactly this question during an interview: to critique HM style type systems. As a candidate I felt this style of questions gave me a far better way to display my knowledge and experience than Leetcode style questions.