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Comment by logicchains | Hacker News Reader

Way too much sugar/"idioms", which makes it hard for someone new to the language to figure out what a given piece of code is actually doing. Confusing use of semicolons for what almost every other language uses commas or newlines (or nothing) for. It's the same feeling as writing bash, and needing to always look up again exactly what the syntax is and where the semicolons go.

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Here's all the cases for using a semicolon. (estimated 30 seconds read)

1. At the end of local variables

   let
     a = 1;
     b = 2;
    in
    a + b

    result: 3

2. At the end of each attributes in an attribute set (a.k.a. dictionaries or key-value pairs)

    {
      a = 1;
      b = 2;
    }

    result: { a = 1; b = 2; }

3. with expressions

    with pkgs;

    coreutils

    result: (the coreutils attribute in the pkgs attribute set)

4. Assertions

    assert a != null;

    a

    result: (the value of a)

Now, you'll never be confused again.

This sounds like a skill problem if you don't even know bash or rust or PHP syntax.

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