Re: [Caml-list] ReasonML concrete syntax

[Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>]

Rust ditched its syntax before release in favor of a syntax more
geared towards the kind of programmers they wanted to attract. This
wasn't a bad decision.

Many people on this mailing list seem to be unaware of the fact that
Reason is really catching on. It's simply a human reality that we like
to try things that are close to what we already know. Bringing OCaml's
syntax close to a language like Javascript, which has countless
developers nowadays, means that a much higher percentage of those
people will want to try out OCaml/Reason. And ultimately, a language
is only as good as its ecosystem -- having the best-designed language
in the world is meaningless if only a few people are using it.

I'm not one of those people who enjoys Reason's syntax (aside from the
issues they fixed in OCaml's syntax), but I appreciate what the Reason
people have done, and I expect Reason to soon eclipse OCaml in terms
of number of users. I don't see this as a bad thing -- Reason's
creators seem to really love OCaml and want to contribute back to the
community.

On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Viet Le <vietlq85@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yawar, crediting the popularity of Rust because of syntax is misleading.
> Mozilla has marketing budget and people behind Rust have build very active
> community with weekly newsletter and know how to market. OCaml is mostly
> used by academia and some industry players, and marketing is not being
> emphasized.
>
> ReasonML is not gaining because of syntax, it's because of huge marketing
> effort and easy to follow tutorials and examples and catchy websites. OCaml
> documentation is as plain as plain can get. Rust has a few catchy websites,
> tutorials and free books as well.
>
> Viet.
>
> On 11 December 2017 at 16:10, Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2017-12-11 15:40, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
>>
>> > although, with currified functions this is only an illusion
>>
>> As they say, "this".  The alternative syntax will lead to people never
>> learning about partial application.
>>
>> Does your own language curry multiple arguments by default like Ocaml
>> does?  If yes, then (IMO) your choice is a mistake, in spite of the
>> (good) arguments you give for it.
>>
>> I would be more tolerant about such syntax in a SML-like language where
>> multiple arguments are modelled with tuples in most cases.
>>
>> --
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>
>
>
>
> --
> Kind regards,
> Viet