CoffeeScript, a simple languages that compiles to JavaScript and aims to make web developers’ lives easier, has just moved to a second major release, one that emphasizes syntax improvements ...

Others think that the semantics of the language (the rules governing its behavior) are a problem too, so we have projects like Google's Dart, which offer both new syntax and behavior.

Human language is based on syntax, a complex set of rules about how words can be combined. In theory, the emergence of syntactic communication might have been a comparatively straightforward process.