I agree especially about the Smalltalk-like keyword-syntax. People not used to it can't probably appreciate the clarity it brings to code. You understand the code better - and faster - because you can understand from each calling site what each method-call does, because it can indicate the meaning of each argument clearly and concisely enough that you actually start using it for that purpose. So to understand what a piece of code does, you mostly don't have to look up the definition of the methods being called.
It takes longer to write but makes reading/understanding much faster. When you write the code it is obvious in any language what your calls "mean", but no so obvious 3 months later.
Writing without keyword syntax is as if all our emails just referred to "him" and "her" and "they" and "there" never mentioning the proper nouns of who or what or where are we actually talking about. It is obvious everybody understands what we are saying at the time those emails are written. But for another person or you yourself trying to understand what a specific email is actually saying would be rather difficult. Relying on the POSITION of an argument, rather than the name of it in the calling context is like saying "that argument which is the 3rd".
It takes longer to write but makes reading/understanding much faster. When you write the code it is obvious in any language what your calls "mean", but no so obvious 3 months later.
Writing without keyword syntax is as if all our emails just referred to "him" and "her" and "they" and "there" never mentioning the proper nouns of who or what or where are we actually talking about. It is obvious everybody understands what we are saying at the time those emails are written. But for another person or you yourself trying to understand what a specific email is actually saying would be rather difficult. Relying on the POSITION of an argument, rather than the name of it in the calling context is like saying "that argument which is the 3rd".