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The feedback we've gotten from web developers is that it's easier to learn, and the integration that we've done for web makes it much easier to be instantly pro

The feedback we've gotten from web developers is that it's easier to learn, and the integration that we've done for web makes it much easier to be instantly productive. Many say they would have not even taken a look at OCaml if there wasn't a group of developers caring about improving the overall ergonomics and front end experience. "relative to OCaml". Many people don't know, but a ton of Facebook's critical infrastructure has been developed on OCaml for a long time: projects such as Infer, Hack, Flow and many others. So there's a ton of existing projects that might be hard to catch up to in the short term and thats okay in my mind, because those projects are using the right tool for the job at hand. Even though the syntax they use might be a little more off-putting to new contributors, I think they're getting the big things right. One benefit to Reason is that it stands to make sure that more developers who are starting new projects, get the big things right - syntax is just one of many means to that end. We want to fully interop with the OCaml ecosystem and we go through great lengths to ensure that Reason can be used with any OCaml project. I would love to focus even more on that once the ReactJS story is in a really good place.

jordwalke 10y ago
The most common (constructive) feedback we currently receive is that once people want to dive into some advanced stuff, they need more material than the brief tutorials, and the primary book is written in OCaml syntax / toolchain. I would love it if we could have custom Real World OCaml "renditions" that allow custom automated presentation of syntax in the online book, as well as some focus on web development workflows.
- tekknolagi 10y ago
  Isn't there a Chrome extension that automatically converts OCaml snippets to Reason syntax?
  - jordwalke 10y ago
    I believe so, but IIRC, it's not possible to use it on Real World OCaml. Also, for something as core as a book, it's worth being able to custom tailor some things including the code generation, and some extensions to the book that focus on specific use cases like getting setup for web development etc.
    - tekknolagi 10y ago
      Why is it not possible to use on RWO?
    - Flow 10y ago
      Maybe they'll consider forking the book into "Real World Reason"? It's quite a great name for a book.
jordwalke 10y ago
Also, if you're looking to help out, the biggest area of impact is to help us unify the install/development process for both native ocaml development and web frontends. That means building a single workflow that allows you to create/build/develop local sandboxed projects - one workflow to develop web applications, as well as native projects that consume/compile opam packages.
jordwalke 10y ago
And another interesting thing to note about the approach taken here, is that I did several surveys and interviews that explored why developers choose the languages they do, and there were many cases where people could have (arguably should have) chosen either of OCaml/Haskell but didn't. I wanted to find out why, and the most common responses were that: they didn't like the syntax of OCaml, they didn't like the available build systems, the installation was too difficult or didn't integrate with their familiar workflow, it needed a better debugger, and the type errors needed improvement (approximately in that order for the groups I asked - which were heavily biased towards application developers). So, the approach we're taking is to solve the most common objections we can do something about, and other people in the OCaml community are making tons of progress towards solving these problems as well (build systems and gdb support for example) (as well as ones I think are even more important than all of the ones I heard about in my survey (multicore etc)).

jordwalke 10y ago

The most common (constructive) feedback we currently receive is that once people want to dive into some advanced stuff, they need more material than the brief tutorials, and the primary book is written in OCaml syntax / toolchain. I would love it if we could have custom Real World OCaml "renditions" that allow custom automated presentation of syntax in the online book, as well as some focus on web development workflows.

tekknolagi 10y ago
Isn't there a Chrome extension that automatically converts OCaml snippets to Reason syntax?
- jordwalke 10y ago
  I believe so, but IIRC, it's not possible to use it on Real World OCaml. Also, for something as core as a book, it's worth being able to custom tailor some things including the code generation, and some extensions to the book that focus on specific use cases like getting setup for web development etc.
  - tekknolagi 10y ago
    Why is it not possible to use on RWO?
  - Flow 10y ago
    Maybe they'll consider forking the book into "Real World Reason"? It's quite a great name for a book.

jordwalke 10y ago

Also, if you're looking to help out, the biggest area of impact is to help us unify the install/development process for both native ocaml development and web frontends. That means building a single workflow that allows you to create/build/develop local sandboxed projects - one workflow to develop web applications, as well as native projects that consume/compile opam packages.

jordwalke 10y ago

And another interesting thing to note about the approach taken here, is that I did several surveys and interviews that explored why developers choose the languages they do, and there were many cases where people could have (arguably should have) chosen either of OCaml/Haskell but didn't. I wanted to find out why, and the most common responses were that: they didn't like the syntax of OCaml, they didn't like the available build systems, the installation was too difficult or didn't integrate with their familiar workflow, it needed a better debugger, and the type errors needed improvement (approximately in that order for the groups I asked - which were heavily biased towards application developers). So, the approach we're taking is to solve the most common objections we can do something about, and other people in the OCaml community are making tons of progress towards solving these problems as well (build systems and gdb support for example) (as well as ones I think are even more important than all of the ones I heard about in my survey (multicore etc)).