alt Hacker NewsNot "never exploit"; Reason and BuckleScript are examples of different "language skins" for OCaml.
The problem with "skins" is that they create variety where people strive for uniformity to lower the cognitive load. OTOH transparent switching between skins (about as easy as changing the tab sizes) would alleviate that.
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> transparent switching between skins (about as easy as changing the tab sizes)
One of my pet "not today but some day" project ideas. In my case, I wanted to give Python/Gdscript syntax to any & all the curly languages (a potential boon to all users of non-Anglo keyboard layouts), one by one, via VSCode extension that implements a virtual filesystem over the real one which translates back & forth the syntaxes during the load/edit/save cycle. Then the whole live LSP background running for the underlying real source files and resurfacing that in the same extension with line-number matchings etc.
Anyone, please steal this idea and run with it, I'm too short on time for it for now =)
> OTOH transparent switching between skins (about as easy as changing the tab sizes) would alleviate that.
That's one of my hopes for the future of the industry: people will be able to just choose the code style and even syntax family (which you're calling skin) they prefer when editing code, and it will be saved in whatever is the "default" for the language (or even something like the Unison Language: store the AST directly which allows cool stuff like de-duplicating definitions and content-addressable code - an idea I first found out on the amazing talk by Joe Armstrong, "The mess we're in" [1]).
Rust, in particular, would perhaps benefit a lot given how a lot of people hate its syntax... but also Lua for people who just can't stand the Pascal-like syntax and really need their C-like braces to be happy.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4