"I get that people have syntax preferences and that there's a certain level of "sniff" test that goes along with these things, but as a fan of programming languages I am always interested in the semantics."

Well, as the syntax commenter, perhaps I'm a bit defensive but I feel like syntax is inherently an important part of what makes a language appealing - features aren't enough. To take it further, I'm pretty sure if you only absolutely only wanted features for manipulating things, you could find those features in some C++ or Java library. Just the Boost library is vast beyond my ability to encompass it but I'd prefer not to be manipulating hundred-line spews of angle-brackets and stuff.

And I, too, like programming language and I feel what makes a language as such cool/useful/etc is that you express a computer's action in a compact, elegant and clear fashion for one's fellow human beings. I remember Steve McConnell said something like "the compiler only has to read source code once but your fellow programmers will need to read it thousands of times".

...it suggests that the designer was interested in the semantics too and that the syntax was a secondary concern

Well, the problem is semantics is part of the user experience regardless of the developers intent. If anything, whenever X is important but X is not a concern of the developers, the chances of X biting you go up, not down.