[uasi]

Your points have nothing to do with ugliness.

> Why `pub fn'? Why is public not the default and why do you have to specify that it's a function?

If public were the default, you'd end up having to make other functions `priv fn` instead.

> Why `: type' and `-> type', why can't type go before the identifier?

It's easier to parse, and most major typed languages other than C/C++/C#/Java put the type after the identifier.

> Why do you need `File::' and `Bytes::'?

Seriously?

> What is that question mark?

The final version doesn't use a question mark.

> Why does the last statement not need a semicolon?

This is a legitimate question. In Rust, the last statement without a semicolon becomes the return value.

[mFixman]

> If public were the default, you'd end up having to make other functions `priv fn` instead.

My guilty pleasure is Go's visibility system, where all functions that start with lowercase are private to the scope of the current class/file and all Functions that start with Uppercase are public.

It doesn't look but it would work and it's a mess when you need acronyms, but it somehow works great and the result looks nice.

[kelnos]

I actually really dislike Go's system! Casing, to me, shouldn't be significant. (Just like I dislike how whitespace is significant in Python.) And to me it just doesn't look nice, but I also prefer snake_case over camelCase and PascalCase.