It means that although it does not truly effect the languages effectiveness, it does negatively effect those who use it. Syntactical sugar exists because people have to use these languages. There is a reason so many languages of the same niche as PHP include array slicing.

"Or that you prefer a syntactical shortcut and everyone who disagrees is an idiot?"

No, not everyone who disagrees with me is an idiot. Just those people who read the sentence "Rather, it matters to me." and somehow think I mean "everyone who disagrees is an idiot", apparently missing the EMPHASIS ON "ME".

(capped for your benefit.)