I was actually a little flabbergasted when you said it looked like "odd text gibberish", but then I took another look at the the first example and saw it.
data BinTree:
| leaf
| node(value, left, right)
end
I'm relatively flexible when it comes to syntax, but clearly syntax is a huge hurdle that almost always gets in the way of adoption. I understand Pyret isn't looking to be the next Python, but for an educational language I would argue it's not living up to Python's Principle of Least Surprise. It's great if you know Haskell, OCaml, Python and other languages, but it's not so great if you're an unsuspecting student who's sharpened your teeth on Java/Python.
I suspect most people could pick up the syntax pretty quickly, but I suspect most people still need some hand-holding on the first page. Most programmers still don't know what this short paragraph means:
Pyret allows for concise, expressive, recursive data declarations. Type annotations
are optional and can be added incrementally, to serve a variety of pedagogic
styles and curricular needs.I have fond memories of learning to program as a kid. Concepts like trees, nodes, and data types have no place in an introductory programming for kids. The initial idea to teach is the notion of getting the machine to follow a set of instructions. IMHO even functions should not be forced until that notion of writing instructions for the computer to follow is mastered. Imperative is the word I'm looking for. You need to start with that. Then move on to loops, arrays (or list but don't try to explain the difference for a while), functions. You don't want to require any of the concepts that we all take for granted just to get started. Type systems? structures? Objects? Those need to be introduced through examples where they are used to solve specific problems.
I have some examples of how an absolute beginner may think.
I was learning about BASIC and had worked up (yeah up) to using FOR loops, IF and GOTO. Then I read about the PLOT(h,v) function which would light up a pixel on the screen - awesomeness was about to ensue. But I had the notion that - as the instruction said - I had to pass the variable h and v to that function, not whatever pair I choose. That would mean copying values from other variables (i.e. h=x, v=y, plot(h,v) and then h=i, v=k, plot(h,v)). Fortunately that notion got cleared up very quickly, but it illustrates the point that a noob may take something quite literally and not understand the simplest abstractions that we all take for granted.
On another occasion I wanted to write Pac-Man so I had variables (we didn't even had structures available) for the player and I figured I'd use x1,y1, x2,y2, x3,y3, x4,y4 to track the positions of the ghosts. I could see in advance that I'd have to replicate the ghost logic 4 times using different variables in each instance (or write a subroutine and copy variables around like I suggested above). What I wanted was to put the logic inside a loop (for n=1 to 4) and reference the ghost variable as xn, yn but that wouldn't work because those are just different 2-letter variables. So I asked someone if there was a way to solve this and was pointed to arrays. The notion that a construct existed that matched exactly what I wanted to do was amazing and I felt like I really must understand something if my ideas about what should be possible were already there. Try to imagine that type of discovery compared to being presented a bunch of such concepts and being expected to understand form the start.
When I got to college I figured I already knew programming. Hah! The data structures course was incredible, I could already see how all of that stuff could be applied to different things. It made perfect sense because I could already imagine how to use it in all kinds of situations.
Even the most simple concepts need to be taught slowly at first, and preferably to solve a specific problem. If your language requires too much boilerplate, type definitions, or anything else it's too much.
So when I said this language looked like a bunch of gibberish, I was looking at it through the lens of a kid who doesn't know shit about any of this. Because for some reason I can remember what its like to think that way.
Also, nobody said Pyret is for kids (defined as pre-teen). It's not.