It is _not_ time to reject the idea that syntax affects maintainability. When you buy your language reference note how many ways there are of doing things; how many special cases; how many themes. Too many increases the chance that the other persons code is written with themes and idioms that the maintainer is not familiar with.
How much does the community advocate machine generated code? Or elevate code obfuscation? They can lead to a culture of poorly written code being O.K. or even cool.
Syntax and community have a lot of influence on maintainability of code!
- Paddy.