Hmm. I understand your rejection for `{}`, but I really think the end result feels nothing like the Java experience. Can I have a shot at defending it? :) It will be a long answer including some of my reasonings, and by all means feel free to disagree if you think I'm wrong about something.

Kind is extremely permissible and terse in general, and a lot of caution and love is put in making it very practical. While `{}` looks like noise in some places, it allows others to be less verbose, resulting in some snippets that look almost like Python, even though Kind isn't indentation aware (which, IMO, is very annoying). For example, commas and semicolons are always optional, so you can actually write lists as just `[1 2 3]`, maps as just `{"foo":1 "bar":2}` and function calls as just `f(1 2 3)`. That wouldn't work without `{}` on case.

There are many places where the Haskell-like syntax break down. We aim to fix every one of these. For example, the following Haskell function:

blocks :: Entity -> Bool -> Bool
blocks entity floats True = True
blocks entity floats False = case entity of
Creature name hp age items pos -> True
Tile pos effect isWater -> not isWater || floats
Wall pos -> True
Fire pos damage kind -> False

Is equivalent to this Kind function:

blocks(entity: Entity, floats: Bool, ghost: Bool): Bool
case ghost {
true: true
false: case entity {
creature: true
tile: not(tile.is_water) || floats
wall: true
fire: false
}
}

Both do the same thing. Which one is more readable? The key insight is that we avoid repetition of variable names (a consequence of Haskell's equational notation), and the need to re-name every field of every variant every time you pattern-match (by naming fields as `matched_name.field_name` by default). That sounds like a small thing, but pattern-matching is the bread and butter of functional programming. Having such a terse syntax for case-of makes the whole language feel so much more refreshing.

Just like that, there are dozens of small little things that we do to make the syntax just work in practice. For example, working with Maybe is often frustrating in functional languages. In Kind, we have a default operator:

let x = some(3) <> 5 // x is 3
let y = none <> 5 // x is 5

An "abort" operator, that flattens your code:

sum_first_3(list: List<Nat>): Nat
x = list[0] abort 0 // returns 0 if x is none
y = list[1] abort 0
z = list[2] abort 0
x + y + z

And, of course, Maybe monad:

sum_first_3(list: List<Nat>): Nat
Maybe {
get x = list[0]
get y = list[1]
bet z = list[2]
return x + y + z
} <> 0

And the same attention we gave to Maybe, we gave to so many other small things. For another example, we HATE indentation. Pattern-matching a structure with only one constructor causes a needless indentation. In Kind, you can use "open", that flattens it too:

open vec
vec.x + vec.y + vec.z

Another source of frustration in Haskell is setting/getting values from lists, maps, records. Things are so inconsistent. `Map.lookup`, `List.index`, `!!`. And lenses, while amazing, are currently really messy, hard to learn and read, full of dependencies and impact the performance. Kind has simple and obvious answers for all of these. For example:

name = my_list[7]

Works just as you expect, returning the 7th element of `my_list : List<A>` as a `Maybe<A>`.

name = my_map{"foo"}

Returns the "foo" entry of `my_map : Map<A>` as a `Maybe<A>`. And:

name = my_record@foo

Returns the `foo` field of `my_record` as `A`. Don't need a maybe? Just default it:

name = my_list[7] <> "anonymous"

Wanna set it?

name = my_list[7] <- "Eric"

That gives the user the convenience of working on JavaScript lists, in a pure functional language.

Something else I noticed in Haskell is that code tends to become really messy when the function body becomes big. That is, when you need to chain many intermediate values. There isn't an obvious answer as to where stop growing horizontally and start adding lets vertically, and when to use `let` or `where`. Sometimes the computation flow becomes upside down, sometimes not. Also, foldr/foldl tends to become really messy when the function body is large. We have one straigth-forward answers to all these situations in Kind. Our let and "pure for" syntax allows for some pretty Python-looking functions:

age_factorial(birth:_year Nat, names: List<String>): String
// Concatenates all names in a string
name = ""
name = for name in names:
name | " " | name

// Computes the age
age = current_year - birth_year

// Computes the factorial of the age
fact = 1
fact = for n from 0 to age:
fact * n

if age <? 18 then
"You're too young to use this program"
else
"Hello, " | name | ", the factorial of your age is " | fact

Obviously, pure fors just desugar to folds. Also, maps are well-thought. In JavaScript, `{foo: 3}` and `{"foo": 3}` both are the same map. In Kind, if you don't write `""`, then it is a variable, which makes a lot more sense. For example:

key = "foo"
map = {key: 3}

Just a small thing though. This answer is already big, and it doesn't even cover things like the built-in HTML syntax, the `sigma` sugars (`[x: Nat] x <? 50` is the type of Nats that are smaller than `50`), other sugars for theorem proving, like `rewrite`...

Basically, what I'm just saying that there are so many nice things behind the initial impression, perhaps you're judging prematurely because of your taste for `{}`? Give it a chance and I think you'll love it!