I wasn't a huge fan of that style too but it's growing on me. More importantly, it's worth noting that this is also intended for experimental features which can eventually become part of the language syntax. eg:

    proc hello(greeting: string): string {.noSideEffect.}

became

    func hello(greeting: string): string

Simply, I'm not one to give praise through a rose colored lens. This is especially true in a place like HN, where its entirely possible the core maintainers of a project may read my feedback, and may or may not feel inclined to clarify, quantify, or at least acknowledge what I have to say about a project.

I'm not bringing it down by being honest in how I feel. My praise for nim is genuine and forthright, and I've recommended many others looking to get more performance coming from a Python background give it an honest look. This is completely subjective, but I don't like 'ugliness' in a syntax. Sometimes it can be changed, sometimes it can't, and it is what it is, I get that, doesn't mean I won't mention it. There's a certain beauty to how a syntax looks when being written, IMO. Why else would developers spend so much time on theming, font choices etc for their editors? :)

tl;dr I'm not one to shy away from giving honest feedback

And where criticism is substantive, that's valuable. It isn't in this case, and it's hardly dishonest to keep subjective preferences in their place: within our own heads.

There's a culture of reflexive criticism in intelligent communities, and I think it has negative side effects we haven't acknowledged. Yeah, it feels good to give one's full-throated opinion without bothering to edit oneself, but we build a better world with more encouragement and more restraint when it comes to nitpicking.

We’re kind of in a place where we are discussing those preferences though.

Personally something that looks so silly stresses me out enough to either not use the feature or not use the language, so I’m kind of happy for the comment.

You may think that’s shallow, but if I have a hundred languages to choose from, a few of which check all the boxes, I’ll go with those.

I think even that is a reasonable comment to make. It's criticism of things that don't impact your decision (as in the comment I responded to) that offer negative value, in my view.

The critique is more substantive than your critique of the critique, especially when you keep dogging on them after they were kind enough to explain it further.