Whilst I agree that s-expression syntax is not a global optimum, I've dealt with many obtuse syntaxes that are worse.
miniblog.
Related Posts
JSON is too small (no comments) and YAML is too big (many string syntaxes, relatively few implementations).
TOML is in the sweet spot for complexity, but I agree this syntax is by far the most confusing part.
TOML 1.1 improves it at least:
One of the challenges with PLs that build on top of others (Typescript to JS, Scala/Clojure to Java, C++ to C) is documentation. You often have to read two sets of docs with two distinct syntaxes.
Which languages do this best? Sometimes I wish there was a TS version of MDN.
Autocomplete for keywords is a surprisingly nuanced problem.
public |
In this case you need to work out what keywords can appear next, and there may be multiple valid syntaxes!
public | function
In this case you want to narrow the modifiers based on context before and after.