There's a lot to explain, and it has occurred to me that I have explained it in a suboptimal manner. Writer of this post, by the way. The problem is that there is just so much to communicate (the design for this language with Matthew took 3 weeks of back and forth communication over several hours a day). A lot to fill in for people that don't know me in real life.

I’m a non programmer, and while I can often just barely grasp what might possibly be going on in a “normal” language, I can’t even begin to pretend to make sense of what you’ve made. I’m glad some are able to appreciate what you’ve done.

I suspect the reception of it being suspected to be a joke, is the mention of lisp and brainfuck priming them for a joke, combined with examples and concepts that seem to require a much stronger than normal technical background. So for the average Joe it ends up in the “turbo encabulator” zone where it’s not quite clear if what’s going on is real or in jest. The prerequisites for understanding just aren’t there.

I also suspect a non-zero percentage of the readers have involuntarily audio flashbacks of Soulja Boy when they see that many “cranks” on a page.

I thought it was cool if a little impenetrable without extra effort! Reminded me a bit of Urbit’s old theorycraft, which I think is still an open question as to whether it’s an elaborate ruse, so the idea did cross my mind that I’m getting my leg pulled, but it seems to be in earnest. I have some similar thoughts in a related but different domain but user-extensible syntax is certainly a nice and uncommon language feature.

oh yeah, Urbit; I'm quite aware of the project and can recognize that to some I might just be explaining it in an intentionally confusing manner, perhaps. I do think the original intent of Urbit was to naturally select nerds, basically (I mean Curtis Yarvin talking about the old UseNet made it really seem like it), and no, that was not the intent here. It literally is just hard to figure out how to communicate the core concepts of Cognition and why we wanted it to be that way.

A high cognitive barrier to entry can serve as a certain sort of healthy gatekeeping for projects that might not be a good fit for everyone. :)