When languages "just become about syntax"

[u/Suspicious-Fix-295]

I have seen a lot of post saying "once I learned C - all other languages just became about syntax"

Has that been true for you? Or did a different language give you the eureka moment - e.g. something like Assembly?

Or is it just a false premise at all to think "once I learn programming language X - then all other languages become **easy**"

[u/mredding]

As I was explaining elsewhere, I think some languages make it easier to understand some concepts over others. Lisp is almost pure lambda calculus - direct AST in a REPL; powerful. But singly-linked lists are a language primitive because cons cells are a language primitive. In C, you have to BUILD the cells, you have to BUILD the list operations. You get to SEE the DSA in action. Even arrays force you to confront pointer arithmetic, which exposes types, sizes, alignment, and thus computing cell offsets practically down at the machine level - certainly at the abstract machine level. Lisp is GC, but C gets you closer to the machine where you have to build memory management on top of the machine.

Different languages are going to grant you different perspectives. And then if you stick around long enough, you're going to start developing intuitions where you're going to start seeing through language and syntax over time, regardless. I've been principally a C++ developer my entire personal geekdom life and professional career, and yet Lisp, being almost as opposite as you can go in the spectrum, really makes a lot of intuitive sense to me, even though I don't get to play with it much.

I've had my eureka moments in all sorts of languages for all sorts of reasons. The Lisp one was the best, though, and I'll never forget it - I sporadically giggled for 2 days. My mother thought I was on drugs. Yeah, mom, it's called a "y-combinator".

So I think it's not so much a false premise so much as there's a greater truth in there looking to get out.