Frankly, I've stopped using languages, or lost interest in learning languages, entire over "small" syntax issues. Syntax is a bigger potential deal-breaker to me than functionality in many cases - I spent many times more time reading code than molding my mental model of what I want to do into something I can write down as code in a particular language. If I can't read and scan code quickly, the language is dead to me.
I empathize. I have a hugely hard time reading code, which is why I tend to use Python wherever I'm able (and even Python's a bit hard for me to read, but it's certainly better than most).
However, I also think it's a little sad to limit your selection of languages strictly due to syntactic concerns, without any consideration of features whatsoever. Some languages that are utterly unreadable (I'm looking at you, Haskell! Like trying to eat soup with your hands tied behind your back) have some really cool concepts that, if nothing else, are great to poach for your own favorite language (list comprehensions spring to mind).
Haskell's actual syntax is actually quite readable — I'd say it's maybe second to Python. Where Haskell gets hard to read is in library code with lots of custom operators, where you have to remember the difference between
**>
*>
*>*
>*>
>**
But that's not really Haskell's syntax, it's just a combination of libraries with lots of unfamiliar operators.
It's not that I won't read up on their inner workings. I do. Compiler writing is a hobby of mine, and I love reading up on new concepts in relation to that. I've read a lot of the original papers for Haskell for example. It's that I won't bother learning to program in them any more - I find it wasted effort.
Haskell was a particularly obnoxious one - I love a lot of the concepts, but I find it horribly slow for me to read. I got so frustrated with it that I implemented a small little lambda calculus interpreter to play with the concepts because that ended up being an easier way for me to learn them than to wrestle with Haskell.
Personally I don't think Haskell will ever become mainstream to a large extent because it is too hard to read for people who are not maths geeks.
I suspect you find Haskell difficult to read not because of its syntax--which is actually rather readable and surprisingly simple--but because it basically shares almost nothing with other languages you know (e.g. Python).
This is likely true! I was born and raised on Java, crashed headlong into Scheme (with painful, traumatic consequences), and just plain didn't "get" functional programming until I was gradually reintroduced to its concepts via R, Python, and Javascript. Consequently, I've found that the best way to learn a new language is in terms of ones that I already know (and I don't think I'm alone here). If you know of any Haskell tutorials that specifically cater to the mindset of Python programmers, I'd be happy to give it another shot. :)
