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Originally Posted by grumpy
Depends on which way you look at it. If you are reading someone elses code, the similarities are more obvious in your examples. If you are writing code, the similarities are not as obvious (eg if you use a syntax from C, you will confuse a Fortran compiler).
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Nevertheless, compared to natural languages, the differences between computer languages are not considerable. To be fluent in a natural language, you have to know something like 6000 words. To be fluent in a computer language, I'd be surprised if that number exceeds 50.
Likewise, the syntax of a computer language is consistant and often consists of a relatively few rules. Compare this to the shifting inconsistancies of English!
Further, the similarities between languages run deep. Once you know that an if statement executes a block of code on a condition, you need only learn the way this differs between languages. In Java, blocks are delimited by {}, conditions are surrounded by (), commands are delimited by ;. In Python, blocks are delimited by whitespace, control statments end in :, and commands are delimited by newlines. In just two sentences, a significant proportion of the differences between the languages are revealed.
You make a good point that programs are rarely this simple, but programs are often made up of simple parts. The syntax of computer languages tends to be rather concise and to the point; the complexity comes generally from libraries, and even the most experienced of programmers only bother learning the very most common libraries by heart.