Hey folks. I’m a newbie to the Reason world, and I’ve just start dabbling in creating a React app using Reason/ReScript. I was enjoying that experience of learning the language and writing the app initially, however I have some concerns about the ecosystem and the direction the language is heading in. I was wondering if some veterans could comment on this… Specifically the split between ReasonML and ReScript.
There’s a lot of information out there that says that Reason is the language, and ReScript is simply a compiler. However that seems not to be the case any more, since ReScript decided to go its own way. ReScript now seems to be a fork of Reason, introducing its own distinct syntax and design decisions. Or - to put it another way - it’s yet another dialect of OCaml.
This raises a few alarm bells for me:
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It’s concerning that a language this young has already splintered. It’s not clear to me why these were separate projects in the first place. And when/why/how would someone ever use ReasonML itself, rather than ReScript?
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The primary motivation for the changes in ReScript seems to be to make it more JS-like. But given that ReasonML was intended to be an elegant alternative for those who were becoming dissatisfied with JS, this goal seems like a step in the wrong direction
Am I correct in my understanding of the relationship between these two projects? And are my concerns misplaced?