I feel like unusual language syntax isn't an issue, as long as the syntax is understandable/readable once the programmer learns the syntax.
It doesn't take too long to pick up and become comfortable with a new syntax in a programming language.
Imo, the reason some esoteric languages fail are not purely because their syntax is obscure but because even once you learn the syntax, it is still hard to understand the code (example: Brainfuck).
With Rust, once you learn the new syntax, you can understand Rust code with relatively little effort.
> Imo, the reason perl failed was not because the syntax was obscure but because even once you learned the syntax, it was still hard to read perl code.
IMO, the reason Perl failed is that Perl 6 (which is a fairly awesome language in its own right) sucked up all the energy in moving Perl forward for too long and delivered too late, while competing languages kept providing usable progress (and avoided, as a consequence, looking dead, which may be as important as the actual usable progress itself.)
It doesn't take too long to pick up and become comfortable with a new syntax in a programming language.
Imo, the reason some esoteric languages fail are not purely because their syntax is obscure but because even once you learn the syntax, it is still hard to understand the code (example: Brainfuck).
With Rust, once you learn the new syntax, you can understand Rust code with relatively little effort.