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I'd disagree about syntax. It really does matter. So much of Rust's success is tricking people into writing a functional style while having it look like an impe
by hardwaregeek 1y ago
I'd disagree about syntax. It really does matter. So much of Rust's success is tricking people into writing a functional style while having it look like an imperative language. OCaml syntax isn't bad per se but it's unfamiliar and that's enough to discourage users.
- myaccountonhn 1y agoI think you're right, and I hate it. Just look at Gleam as an example where adopting a more C like syntax got them a ton more adoption almost over night. I love Ocaml (and Haskell-esque) syntax, but I must admit it can be detrimental to getting adopted. I think another issue was bad tooling for a long time. Now with Dune it's great though, with very fast compile speeds. Hopefully OCaml slowly gets the recognition it deserves, because it really is a great language.
- sesm 1y agoRust refs are not OCaml refs though. Rust just places more guardrails around update-in-place model, instead of using controlled references to immutable data like OCaml (and Clojure).