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Comment by tshaddox | Hacker News Reader

The article briefly mentions ReasonML, which offers a different syntax which aims to be more familiar to JavaScript programmers but is also likely to be more familiar to most programmers of C-family languages.

There’s also ReScript, which is a very similar alternate syntax which sort of split off from the ReasonML community in a confusing and complicated sequence of events which is frustrating to try to follow for someone who was just interested in the programming language and tooling: https://rescript-lang.org/blog/bucklescript-is-rebranding

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> The article briefly mentions ReasonML, which offers a different syntax which aims to be more familiar to JavaScript programmers but is also likely to be more familiar to most programmers of C-family languages.

One thing I don't like about this is that they've replaced:

> let x = 1 in

with

> let x = 1;

In plain OCaml you only use semicolons on lines that evaluate to unit, so they're a clear indicator that you've done something with side effects. ReasonML loses this useful visual distinction in order to look more like JavaScript.

Agree. ReasonML threw the baby out with the bathwater. If ever there's a language to not immatate it's Javascript.

Would be interesting to see a something that updated some ocaml quirks, but stayed true to the spirit of the syntax. Ie comments and multiply but not ;

That split was really bad. At the height if its popularity (yes, there was a brief moment in the sun) it was also influencing the OCaml community IIRC, bringing improvements like friendly error messages and syntax improvements.

Now though... Who cares about either of the Re* languages?

ReScript community is well and alive and is actively working on improving the ReScript compiler and tooling. V10 just came out with records with optional fields - https://forum.rescript-lang.org/t/ann-rescript-v10-released/.... Async/await is in the works. The language is really really good (especially say comparing to TypeScript). Make sure to check it out.

ReScript is amazing. I really don't know much about the split (it's not like I didn't try to understand it, I just can't understand the anger of non-Ocaml developers at the split).

Rescript allows me to write Javascript in a sound type system, while remaining very close to how you would write code in Javascript.

Rescript to me feels like Typescript + a very prescriptive linting system which prevents a lot of problems, and since the linting system wouldn't let you do certain things, might as well get rid of them from the Type checker, this results in a much faster compiler.

I have been using ReScript for (almost) a year as a production programming language. There were a few limitations and confusions at first, (and I don't think it will be replacing TypeScript in any near future) but I can't even think about going back to a work environment uses TypeScript, the dev experience is so good :)

I think ReScript community is pretty active right now, I have big expectations about future 10.x releases (I'm working for a company uses ReScript as a main programming language) there are less buzz recently though.

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