> > `let` patterns can be used as conditions in `if`: You can code without that, it's just that you are going to wish you had it after your first few programs.

> > `let` patterns can be used as conditions in `if`: You can code without that, it's just that you are going to wish you had it after your first few programs. > but the language itself seems needlessly complex to me A lot of the complexity is around making the explicitness of the language bearable. If you had to be explicit without all the syntax sugar and type / lifetime inference it would be insufferable to program in.