[badminton1]

Reminds me of the difference between JavaScript and CoffeeScript.

CoffeeScript attempts to become more concise by removing delimiters and making things more implicit. I don't think that actually adds much value.

In a sense, it was the equivalent of trying to simplify traffic by removing lane delimiters and street signaling. You could somehow imagine they're there, but it's better if you can see them.

[Rapzid]

This is a relatively small change to how blocks are defined syntactically in a language that already brings quite a bit to the table over Java.. You say reminds, which is fair, but I'd say it's also quite different.

I'm a huge proponent of TypeScript and critic of using CoffeeScript in 2017, so while you may not(but may!) agree that TypeScript brings significant value over raw ES6+ I definitely relate with CofeeScript not bringing enough value to the table to warrant such a divergence in syntax. I will say though that pre-ES6+ it really tidied up a few things like classes, this binding, etc.

I've argued for and successfully migrated CoffeeScript projects to TypeScript, but I'll be the first to admit it is "ugly" compared to CoffeeScript. F# is a pretty elegant language IMHO, and it's success using significant white space is cited early in the post. If we can have all the added VALUE of Scala AND a tidier, potentially optional syntax then why not?

[badminton1]

"Tidy" is very relative. We could go back to the traffic lanes example and say that streets would be tidier without lines drawn on them. But those lines look better than crashed cars and dead people. Minimalism is about removing redundant stuff, those delimiters aren't redundant unless made redundant through whitespace. I do not think whitespace is the way to go.