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Comment by geocar | Hacker News Reader

> If you're gonna make a website for your programming language, you NEED to put an example of the language front and center on the landing page.

Did you consider the possibility that this sort of thing was done to avoid wasting time with non-experts who think an "example" of a language they don't know is enough to make comments about?

> I still have not seen a line of TAL

My suggestion: Start with the "Papers" and then look at the paper that introduces TAL. It has an example program with analysis

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I’m an expert and I find it very frustrating when I don’t find some example code front and centre. It might not reveal the detail, but it sets the scene quickly and lets me know what sort of a thing I’m dealing with.

> I’m an expert and I find it very frustrating

So you say, but I think _I'm_ an expert too, and I wasn't frustrated in the slightest. Maybe you're just not an expert in this space. Did you consider that?

Of course it would be nice if everyone communicated to us in our preferred way, but I think making the reader work a little bit before they have a conversation is a good way to figure out if you're dealing with an expert or not, because an expert actually worth talking to about your ideas will not find it to be too much work to understand them

Students can especially benefit from this advice, because they are still too new to be able to recognise experts from the substance of their words

"I don't like having my time wasted" does not imply anything about one's skill in a field.

It's not 1995. Most of the internet is noise, and if you're showcasing something it's good form to immediately show your readers what actually is, and why they may or may not care about it.

Not showing the syntax of a programming language on the homepage of a programming language is poor communication. If you're OK with that - great, but not valuing your time and willingness to have it wasted in no way implies that you're an "expert".

> "I don't like having my time wasted" does not imply anything about one's skill in a field.

I have no idea what you think you just said, but I did not say anything like that.

> Most of the internet is noise, and if you're showcasing something it's good form to immediately show your readers what actually is

So you say, but without responding to either of my suggestions for not doing this, and after saying something that doesn't sound relevant at all.

Of what exactly are you trying to convince me to do? I'm not the author of this page, I'm not confused by what TAL is, and I'm not going to agree that you don't deserve to have your time wasted when you're here wasting mine, so what is it?

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