I get puzzled by how often projects whose ostensible user bases are composed entirely of technical professionals seem to make vast sweeping branding changes on the basis of "simplifying" the "confusing" naming, so that we end up with three(?) different things (a compiler, a language syntax, a new almost-compatible version of the language syntax) with the same name.
Is there really a large audience of programmers capable of writing OCaml but not catching on that "BuckleScript" referred to the compiler? (For that matter, is there really a large audience of programmers capable of writing OCaml but only if the syntax superficially resembles JS? Maybe I'm the one out of sync here...)
Reason/BuckleScript has always been about attracting JS developers to the powerful type system of OCaml. That was the reasoning for the Reason syntax. This, to me, feels like another step in accommodating developers who are coming from outside the OCaml ecosystem. When I was a less experienced developer, and even still sometimes now-a-days, as I approached a new language, the difficulties I often had were more with the tooling surrounding a language rather than the language itself.
As a language ages and evolves, I think it's easier for the authors and contributors to forget what it's like approaching it fresh. Many times documentation is written with an unintended assumption of an understanding of the ecosystem. Coming to the OCaml/Reason/BuckleScript ecosystem could definitely be confusing.
I'm a Clojure/Script programmer, it took me 20+ minutes to figure wtf this even is and I'm still not clear on the mission. Clojure is pretty clear https://clojure.org/about/rationale
Here's what it looks like: a new language for cross platform typed functional programming targeting OCaml (server) and Javascript (browser) ecosystem compatibility, backed by Facebook & marketing to mainstream JS devs
Is there really a large audience of programmers capable of writing OCaml but not catching on that "BuckleScript" referred to the compiler? (For that matter, is there really a large audience of programmers capable of writing OCaml but only if the syntax superficially resembles JS? Maybe I'm the one out of sync here...)