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By industry-oriented programs, I'm referring to institutions of higher learning which have tailored their cirricula primarily to prepare their students for empl

by rtl49 11y ago

By industry-oriented programs, I'm referring to institutions of higher learning which have tailored their cirricula primarily to prepare their students for employment in industry. I contrast this with those which are intended to prepare their students for research. I've said nothing of depth about the merits of OCaml or FP in itself. I'm simply pointing out that the blog post clearly identifies the use of OCaml as a competitive advantage without discussing any of its drawbacks, whether these arise from the nature of the language itself or for historical reasons. This makes the article significantly less useful for a person trying to select a language for their company's codebase, which I take to be the whole point of writing the post to begin with. Perhaps the real goal of the post was to attract the attention of OCaml developers, rather than discussing the titular question "Why we use OCaml." If this is the case, I'm sorry for having wasted my time criticizing it.

loup-vaillant 11y ago
It's a piece of advocacy. I wouldn't expect it to discuss downsides much. What irks me more is the absence of meaty arguments for the language. But then I realised that explaining why the listed features are good is hard. Someone who haven't been exposed to FP is going to take a lot of teaching and persuading. Or a damn good motivating example, but I have yet to find one.
the_af 11y ago
Oh, I misunderstood your comment then. I suppose you're right, but I think industry-oriented school programs will start featuring more FP in their curricula as hybrid languages advance even further in the real world. Like a sibling comment said, this is an advocacy piece. I don't know if anyone will pick OCaml (or any language) for their company immediately after reading a blog, but it might pique their interest and make them research the language and consider it for their own projects, an interest which might eventually develop into considering the language for their day job. I know it was the case for me with Scala!

by rtl49 11y ago

loup-vaillant 11y ago

It's a piece of advocacy. I wouldn't expect it to discuss downsides much. What irks me more is the absence of meaty arguments for the language. But then I realised that explaining why the listed features are good is hard. Someone who haven't been exposed to FP is going to take a lot of teaching and persuading. Or a damn good motivating example, but I have yet to find one.

the_af 11y ago

Oh, I misunderstood your comment then. I suppose you're right, but I think industry-oriented school programs will start featuring more FP in their curricula as hybrid languages advance even further in the real world. Like a sibling comment said, this is an advocacy piece. I don't know if anyone will pick OCaml (or any language) for their company immediately after reading a blog, but it might pique their interest and make them research the language and consider it for their own projects, an interest which might eventually develop into considering the language for their day job. I know it was the case for me with Scala!