Comment by FloorEgg

Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics all define meaning at different scopes/scales.

Syntax is the smallest scale (words, punctuation, grammar), semantics is sentence or small function level, and pragmatics is paragraph-essay and program level.

For example when training early smaller scale LLMs they noticed that syntax was the first property for the LLM to reproduce reliably. They got proper grammar and punctuation but the sentences made no sense. When they scaled up they got semantics but not pragmatics. The sentences made sense but paragraphs didn't. Eventually the systems could output whole essays that made sense.

Even though you're asking about programming specifically, these concepts are universal to language, and are maybe a bit more intuitively applied to English (or your native language).

I suspect that a computer scientist could give a different mathematical explanation about how these concepts compile into binary or machine code in different ways, and I can't explain that. Generally I think of syntax as being very language specific but semantics and pragmatics can be translated across languages with similar capabilities.