The syntax you're complaining about is Erlang's. (_ is to ignore a token in a pattern match, braces denote tuples.) I've added a simple example, because I rec

The syntax you're complaining about is Erlang's. (_ is to ignore a token in a pattern match, braces denote tuples.) I've added a simple example, because I received that criticism from others, so, thanks for your feedback. Lasp's prototypical implementation is provided as an Erlang library: this is a research language and we're researching the semantics of distributed computation and not the syntax. The syntax seen in the examples is extremely close to the syntax of the built in 'lists' module of Erlang, with the addition of having to declare types, because of Erlang's type system. This was done to make it seem natural to Erlang programmers. (Disclaimer, I'm one of the primary authors of Lasp, @cmeik on Twitter)