Finally I understand what it is like to use a language that does not have any extra resources like stackoverflow or tutorials.

Using ReasonML for my final year project and the only resource I have is the API doc ☹️

Holy Shit! Pattern matching is too awesome.

How could I live before that?

Others: I can speak English, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, etc...

Me: I can speak Gujarati, Hindi, English, Javascript, Php, Python, Java, XML, Rust, ReasonML, etc...

Why is it that virtually all new languages in the last 25 years or so have a C-like syntax?

- Java wanted to sort-of knock off C++.
- C# wanted to be Java but on Microsoft's proprietary stack instead of SUN's (now Oracle's).
- Several other languages such as Vala, Scala, Swift, etc. do only careful evolution, seemingly so as to not alienate the devs used to previous C-like languages.
- Not to speak of everyone's favourite enemy, JavaScript…
- Then there is ReasonML which is basically an alternate, more C-like, syntax for OCaml, and is then compiled to JavaScript.

Now we're slowly arriving at the meat of this rant: back when I started university, the first semester programming lecture used Scheme, and provided a fine introduction to (functional) programming. Scheme, like other variants of Lisp, is a fine language, very flexible, code is data, data is code, but you get somewhat lost in a sea of parentheses, probably worse than the C-like languages' salad of curly braces. But it was a refreshing change from the likes of C, C++, and Java in terms of approach.

But the real enlightenment came when I read through Okasaki's paper on purely functional data structures. The author uses Standard ML in the paper, and after the initial shock (because it's different than most everything else I had seen), and getting used to the notation, I loved the crisp clarity it brings with almost no ceremony at all!

After looking around a bit, I found that nobody seems to use SML anymore, but there are viable alternatives, depending on your taste:

- Pragmatic programmers can use OCaml, which has immutability by default, and tries to guide the programmer to a functional programming mindset, but can accommodate imperative constructs easily when necessary.
- F# was born as OCaml on .NET but has now evolved into its own great thing with many upsides and very few downsides; I recommend every C# developer should give it a try.
- Somewhat more extreme is Haskell, with its ideology of pure functions and lazy evaluation that makes introducing side effects, I/O, and other imperative constructs rather a pain in the arse, and not quite my piece of cake, but learning it can still help you be a better programmer in whatever language you use on a day-to-day basis.

Anyway, the point is that after working with several of these languages developed out of the original Meta Language, it baffles me how anyone can be happy being a curly-braces-language developer without craving something more succinct and to-the-point. Especially when it comes to JavaScript: all the above mentioned ML-like languages can be compiled to JavaScript, so developing directly in JavaScript should hardly be a necessity.

Obviously these curly-braces languages will still be needed for a long time coming, legacy systems and all—just look at COBOL—, but my point stands.

Even if he's a younger guy than most other examples, my mention is:

Jordan Walke

He's the inventor of React, which probably changed the way to write (web-)apps for a lot of people and was based on a prototype written in StandardML.

He's also created ReasonML which is not only in many ways a more fitting language to write React, but also a good systems language (props to OCaml and it's unbreakable type system). Many React concepts/patterns have their origins in functional language concepts, including reducers and hooks.

algolia.com is a piece of fucking shit, trying to use the search on the reasonml forms just pisses me off and makes me want to punch a baby in the face!!!

How do you feel about using TypeScript with React? I appreciate the benefits, but, as every snippet of React code everywhere on the web is vanilla JS,I just don't want the cognitive overhead.

Yes, I know TS is JS, but, if I'm not going to use the features, why bother? I'd want to strongly type props, state, etc.

What's the status of TypeScript support in the React ecosystem (eg Router, MUI, etc.)?

I'm kinda hoping Reason will get some traction as the type inference is much better, but, will that happen? Or is that going to fizzle so it's a choice between TS and JS?

Appreciate any thoughts on this---including those from anyone who's in the same boat.

Looking for views on TS in React ecosystem---no need to sell me on TS in general.

ReasonML to JS or Typescript or Flow? Which one you love?

After working with ReasonML/Bucklescript for nearly half a year, it is very hard to go back to plain js even with flowtype.

I feel paced by the language AND especially by untyped libraries which makes everything I import a fucking any type, gaaaaaah!