My Thoughts on OCaml vs Haskell/Rust in 2023

[cemerick]

@bluddy

I think [parens and braces are] very important for some crowds. C++ programmers are very traditional, so providing them with a familiar syntax is important if you want to have them try something new. Python and ruby were the ‘cool kids’ of the pre-JS era.

I think that’s exactly right, aesthetic expectations are strongly correlated with community history, etc. But if we’re stipulating that a tracing GC is an essential aspect of some future ML, then C++ / “systems” programmers are necessarily not a target demographic given their allergy to such things, “application” programmers are. In that context, yes, parens and braces have a strong lineage, esp. via Javascript and such, but it’s hardly a unanimous requirement (again, python, ruby, and even VB remains as popular as e.g. typescript, at least according to available data).