[brodo]

Evan has described a lot of the thinking behind his decisions in this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYk8CKH7OhE

The <~ for Signal.map is a good example for a "clever" thing which makes languages hard to read for newbies. It looks like it's part of the syntax and not a function. It's not hard to understand, but it's another thing to learn. I am very happy that things are removed from Elm (or not added in the first place, like type classes) because design is not finished when there is nothing more to add but when there is nothing more to remove.

[ablesearcher]

I've seen Evan's talk. Evan confuses the presentation of features with the value of those features. (I suppose one could solve the difficulties people have in learning Mathematics by throwing out everything after Algebra I; another solution, however, might be to do a better job teaching the more difficult stuff.)

Just because you shouldn't expose new programmers to advanced concepts on the first day doesn't mean they shouldn't be a part of the language. Similarly, the fact (<~) might confuse someone new to Elm isn't a reason for removing it from the language.

I'm sympathetic to the concern that some code is too "clever" or dense; but Elm swings the pendulum too far.

(Btw, type-classes are not incidental complexity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6COvD8oynmI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIZxTQP1ifo )

[PeCaN]

It seems backwards to me to optimize a language for newbies.