I think what Carl means with his criticisms is what I mean by "If you're not bending the language, you're not using it."
Why would you use a language that turns every IF statement into a function call, unless you're doing some higher-level COMPOSE-ing and structuring somewhere to take advantage of that?
I've said my piece on just not being that impressed by the design of VID. The moment will come where Ren-C can bring all its parts to bear on the problem, and I'm confident I can make something more compelling.
In the meantime, I think UPARSE is becoming the shining city on the hill: an epic usermode example of what can be accomplished, using the modern capabilities of Ren-C.
But I've also pointed out that people would benefit from looking at small examples, which people don't have to be deep into a domain to understand. I mentioned my own sort of personal revelation in re-inventing USCII:
Also, things like my ENHEX and DEHEX testing dialect are really good for general audiences, IMO:
ENHEX and DEHEX testing, another "Micro-Dialect"
People need to understand that there are no rules, and the value of breaking them. They have to see how tools like PARSE can tap the latent potential of your representation, without breaking a sweat.
The time is coming...