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by refried_ 2350 days ago
Hey; Unison author here—

Definitely appreciate this honest and helpful, specific docs feedback, so thanks for taking the time to put it together. We do want the value of Unison to be straightforward given even a quick skim of the site, so: sorry about the current state, we'll try to improve it. :)
2 comments
nlh 2350 days ago
Just to add to that - I’m kind of in the same boat here. I had to read the homepage and intro sections a few times and I’m honestly still a bit lost in understanding who this benefits and why.

Just by way of anchoring: I’m no dunce, I’m a typical nerdy guy who knows his UNIX and has written lots of C, Python, JavaScipt, Ruby, etc. Written some mobile apps. Written plenty of web stuff. But I’m not immersed in any academic language study and not really an FP guy.

I don’t think you should dumb this down - the text itself is very good prose. But the context is missing something — perhaps a paragraph or two of anchoring for us “normal programmers” to explain why this is relevant to people who normally write Python web apps or Rust utilities or C++ games all day long (or if it’s not relevant, why, and who it is relevant for).

Good luck with the project!

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jedimastert 2350 days ago
No worries. I guess it sounded a bit antagonistic, I apologize for that. I am actually interested in the idea, I was just a little frustrated that it was hard to figure out what was different about the language.
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refried_ 2350 days ago
It just sounded honest. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's mainly just an issue of manpower on our end (we do accept doc contributions, but probably we should be doing it); having fresh reader eyes on it like this is still valuable though.

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jedimastert 2350 days ago
> It's mainly just an issue of manpower on our end (we do accept doc contributions, but probably we should be doing it); having fresh reader eyes on it like this is still valuable though.

That's absolutely fair, and tbh probably the problem. I've probably been thinking about the concept for so long that it doesn't occur to you that the phrase wasn't that well known.

I remember a multi-year project in college I was trying to explain about, and blew right through "potential energy surface" and lost him completely. I didn't realize it was something I'd have to explain.

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