> The idea that the syntax of the language would ever be a bottleneck sounds ridiculous to me.
Great! Then you can pick any man of the street and show him some code, and he will understand the syntax intuitively and start coding? Dollar signs, semicolons, brackets and === and the difference between "" and ''. It's all self explanatory.
Driving a motorized vehicle was a highly specialized task in the beginning. You had to prime fuel, adjust carb needles, maybe tighten a chain after a day of driving. Manufacturers did all they could to make vehicles as easy as possible for the users, so that they can focus on actually driving, and not fighting against the machine. Look at where cars are today - anybody can drive without needing any skills relating to the machine. AI is doing the same for programming, which is great.
Now a common man can make software without learning thousands of different arbitrary rules.
Can you pick any man of the street and show him some text in a foreign language and get him to translate it? Especially with a foreign script? Can you write in japanese? or Persian? You had to go to school to learn how to write, you were not born with that knowledge.
A programming language is way easier than learning a foreign natural language. I believe the issue you struggle with is formal logic, not the syntax. Not everyone is trained to think formally (and some may find it arduous).