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I find the syntax both terrible to read and terrible to write. Syntax is what I look at first with any unfamiliar programming language. The syntax is the UI of

• sanxiyn 6y ago
  Since syntax of F* looks okay to me, I am curious what particular points of syntax of F* you find terrible to read and write.
  • idnefju 6y ago
    In general I like ML based syntax, but Haskell using type signatures really helps read code easier. Wish other languages would adopt them
    • paavohtl 6y ago
      I don't understand this critique with regards to F*. As far as I can tell it has a type signature syntax that is very similar to Haskell, and is used extensively in the linked tutorial.
• haskellandchill 6y ago
  It's the ML family of languages syntax, very familiar if you've studied programming languages. Not sure what you can find terrible about it, it's a clean and minimal syntax.
• gameswithgo 6y ago
  people get used to syntaxes, by avoiding languages that don’t immediately appeal to your current syntactic preferences you are missing out on actual important and interesting ideas over triviality that would go away with familiarity
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  > I find the syntax both terrible to read and terrible to write. I don’t, but then I've spent time with a variety of languages that, like F*, are from the ML syntax family, and find that syntax quite comfortable. I can see why it would seem that way at first impression to someone who, for instance, has almost exclusively used languages with Algol-derived syntax (which is pretty common these days, since outside of Haskell from the ML family and Clojure from the Lisp family, most currently popular languages have Algol-derived syntax, or at least superficially Algol-like syntax.) > Syntax is what I look at first with any unfamiliar programming language. It's one of the things I look at early on, too, but it's also something I try to not to judge to firmly early on, because subjective view of syntax, like other UI impressions, is highly dependent on familiarity, and it takes a while to get past superficial similarity and dissimilarity to what one is used to and into any deeper strengths and weaknesses of the syntax (or other UI).
• amw-zero 6y ago
  What’s an example of a language with a good syntax?
  • mhh__ 6y ago
    I think Python (if nothing else) has good syntax. Forcing students not to write spaghetti is probably the only thing I actually like about python. I really like the philosophy behind Haskell, for example, but I really think it's syntax let's it down - it encourages very snippet-y programming which in turn means structure can be require parsing rather than glancing at and also variables name that are very short.