Relevant to this discussion, I think what I find important in a programming language is:
- size/functionality/provisions of standard library
- built-in support for different data structures/containers, e.g. arrays, lists, whatever (either direct syntax or through std lib)
- performance
- code readability
- friendly string manipulation functionality, i.e. I don't like having to use strcat in C, I like being able to simply have a built-in operator for readability
- portability and standardization
