You should really watch Ola Bini's talk "Expressing Abstraction - Abstracting Expression" from Strange Loop 2012: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Language-E

You should really watch Ola Bini's talk "Expressing Abstraction - Abstracting Expression" from Strange Loop 2012: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Language-Expressiveness http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Language-Expressiveness tl;dw: there are many types of expressiveness in programming languages, and they're all important. Likewise syntax is important too, but often downplayed by the PLT community. Case in point: your post!