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Why would someone switch language if the familiar concepts have been given different names for no good reason?

Use different syntax and naming for the things that are genuinely different about your language.

Because in this case, it's an alternative to a language (Objective C) with a not so boring esoteric syntax.

Not boring at all - but I'm not sure this helps adoption any. :)

Since I'm being downvoted... please excuse my poor attempt at sarcasm.

What I'm saying is that I sometimes get the impression that language designers randomly change up syntax just to make their language look different, and thus superficially more appealing to users. Just like any other kind of product.

It would be pretty weird to base language switching decision on syntax similarity.

Do you see the amount of people that complain about Pythons white space? Plenty of people avoid it for that reason alone.