That's neither my point nor OP's point. The soothing feeling of "this text has a comfortably familiar shape" is entirely about syntax, and indeed is only a soothing feeling because such programmer has not seen anything beyond it and is unwilling to get outside that comfort zone.

I do not hire anything who does not get outside of their comfort zone or who is intimated by syntax they haven't seen. If a programmer rejects Haskell or OCaml by giving me a good critique of say, Hindley Milner style type systems†, that's a good programmer I'm willing to hire even though I don't necessarily agree.

†: I've been asked exactly this question during an interview: to critique HM style type systems. As a candidate I felt this style of questions gave me a far better way to display my knowledge and experience than Leetcode style questions.

> I do not hire anything

Today's Freudian slip award goes to...

Do you put any weight on any factors beside the technical capabilities of the tools you're working with? Like, say, how easy they are to pick up or use, etc.?

The way your comment reads, it's like you're saying you'll never hire someone who rejects speaking to you in Esperanto unless they offer a good critique of its grammar.

You’re on hacker news so Occam’s razor would pick the simplest explanation is which the latter

You do not need too much good programmers.