yeah, there was a big effort to make OCaml more approachable by rewriting the compiler frontend and providing a JS-like syntax (Reason) – this came with a lot of baggage too, because when people expect it to feel like JS, they expect similar libraries to JS, similar programming styles, etc. So it isn't trivial to pull off.

But since Reason was just a new syntax, this meant it could be used for both native and also JS development – and on the native side of course you break the abstraction and realize you have to work with all the OCaml tooling.

Some people liked that, some people didn't. It created tension especially around how to write Reason code because the native side followed OCaml conventions whereas the JS side followed JS-like conventions.

Fast forward a few years, and Reason splits into Reason and ReScript. So now you have OCaml, Reason (through Melange), and ReScript. The latter supports only JS as a compilation target, and is slowly moving further and further away as a language (with new type-system and language features that make it better for interop with JS).

A lot of cognitive overhead, enough for many newcomers to just use TypeScript tbh, so definitely a good cautionary tale of refocusing/splitting ecosystems and communities.