[cesarb]

I would say the try!() macro is an exception to that rule: if the ? operator existed since the beginning, it would be seen as "too much magic" (in a language that already used up most of its "strangeness budget" in lifetimes/borrowing), while try!() is just a very simple macro you could write yourself, with no special compiler support. Only later, after people got used to try!() everywhere, the ? operator became viable, as "just a shortcut to try!() with better precedence (and it also works on Option)".

That is, there's a path dependence, where the existence of try!() made the ? operator viable.

[jasode]

>if the ? operator existed since the beginning, it would be seen as "too much magic" [...] That is, there's a path dependence, where the existence of try!() made the ? operator viable.

Yes, C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup made a similar observation:

- For new features, people insist on LOUD explicit syntax.

- For established features, people want terse notation.

There seems to be an invisible "Overton Window" of evolving programming language features and syntax.

[zanny]

Having both the terse and the verbose is so valuable for onboarding.

I feel like the reason pointers as a mechanism in native languages is such a barrier to cross for a newbie is because they are this magical star symbol * just floating around doing... something?

If people started out writing pointer<string> foo instead of string* foo and had to use explicit derefrencing via name rather than by magical glyphs onboarding would be so much easier.

I think it applies to almost all programming concepts too. Starting a language with a baseline grammar of just function invocation -f(x) = y as <noun>.<verb>(<noun>...) - and extrapolating from there and introducing terse grammar progressively as shortcuts would serve much better to get concepts in heads rather than arcane ritualistic glyphs. Introduce x.add(y) then say x + y is the shorthand.

Rust does a really great job "functionizing" almost everything in the language - it has the add trait after all https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ops/trait.Add.html. You can actually write tons of Rust in just function call form and make it look like Lisp.