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 a language and if that's terrible, I won't enjoy using it.
Syntax is what I look at first with any unfamiliar programming language. The syntax is the UI of a language and if that's terrible, I won't enjoy using it.
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).
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.