Re: [Caml-list] ReasonML concrete syntax

[Marshall <marshall@logical.net>]

> On Dec 11, 2017, at 11:10 AM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>  It's simply a human reality that we like
> to try things that are close to what we already know. 

Yes, and I would go further.  There are too many tools and languages to explore; any time spent exploring one has an opportunity cost in lost exploration of something else that might be useful or just cool.

Any moderately experienced programmer can learn a lot about a new language that’s not too different just by learning a few core concepts, looking at some code, and trying to write some simple programs.   Past experience plays a big role, though.  If you’d never seen OO programming, reading C++ or Java or OO-style Python or OO-style Javascript requires a bit more learning, but once you know the concepts from one, you can guess a lot about another.  The same point holds for FP.  And it holds for syntax in general.  Everyone knows C/Java/Javascript/a million other languages style syntax.  If you come from that world and try to learn Lisp or Haskell or an ML-family language, you have to do a bit of study before you can even start experimenting seriously.  Then you might ask:  “Is it worth it right now?  There all of these other tools or languages I want to learn.  This new language with the weird syntax sounds cool, and I know I’m smart enough to learn it, but I’m busy.   I have other priorities at the moment.  Maybe I’ll learn it another time.”  And then you never get back to it, because there are always too many things to learn, and you know, you have to have a life, too.  And maybe if the syntax had seemed more intuitive, by the time you put the new language with the weird syntax aside for the time being, you would have already written your first little program in it, because you could guess how to write it just from looking at a little bit of sample code and reading a screenfull of background info.  And by now you would have taken the first step understanding the new language, and might be starting to wonder whether this could be a very useful tool to learn more thoroughly.

I like ML-style syntax, but I know that that makes me weird among programmers. :-)