every framework we use -- library, language, runtime, operating system, hardware -- makes decisions that constrain what we can express.

languages like haskell, lisp, or ruby may make it easy to create new control structures that blend well with the existing syntax, but new control structures don't help if it's still annoying to write, say, very long lines of free-form text -- a problem that xml handles more gracefully than lisp. syntax makes a difference.

i think it's unlikely we'll win a several-orders-of-magnitude decrease in complexity by confining ourselves to the syntax decisions of one language.