alt Hacker NewsStrudel is dope and a ton of fun, but every single piece of its interface seems determined to confuse people who already know music theory and composition.
That's not really a point against it, it's a great tool and it's a ton of fun, but I wish there was a way to use it that at least kind of sort of mapped back to traditional music notation, especially rhythm notation.
It would be unergonomic, if not painful, to use a western classical approach to rhythm in a programming environment. Alex McLean, the main author of Tidal/Strudel, is very much into Indian classical, and this is reflected in the approach to rhythm. IMO this is an good choice, and people who know music theory and composition should feel right at home, assuming we're talking about the right theory.
When it comes to pitch (and I guess we agree on this) Strudel is firmly on the western traditional side. It generally assumes 12-tone equal temperament, uses ABC notation, has built-in facilities to express chords using their classical names...
Meanwhile I'm over here programming music where I express all frequencies as fractions or monzos. I find this better suited to a music programming environment, but this might be more personal.