It is important - we're not just robots doing work to eat and have where to live, we need to enjoy what we do and having pleasant syntax is what made many fall in love with Ruby. Let's not pretend syntax doesn't matter - it does, indeed, otherwise there wouldn't be Scala today either!
I agree, syntax does matter. A program should look good on the page. It's much more satisfying to write code in a language that you can craft in an eye-pleasing manner.
