> Syntax is probably one of the single most important things in any language. It matters for writing, but especially for reading.

That appears to be your position (and maybe even that of a majority of developers), but it apparently isn't the position of the Pony developers. If you have a language in which you can mathematically reason about code (which Pony claims very prominently), then surface concerns such as syntax seem to matter less.

It's a different design goal and it feels like many people in the comments here don't appreciate that.