5 ms·

It will be interesting to see how the $200 million+ Tezos warchest affects the popularity and development of OCaml. That seems to be a fairly large amount in re

by ericb 8y ago

It will be interesting to see how the $200 million+ Tezos warchest affects the popularity and development of OCaml. That seems to be a fairly large amount in relation to the size of the current OCaml ecosystem, and the whole purpose of the fund is to grow the ecosystem of Tezos which by necessity includes the OCaml ecosystem.

cannam 8y ago
I hadn't heard of Tezos. Following that up I find https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/, "a new platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications", leading to http://doc.tzalpha.net/index.html http://doc.tzalpha.net/index.html which is indeed full of Ocaml stuff. Where does $200 million+ come into it? What is the history there?
- ufo 8y ago
  They raised that much money in their "ICO" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503768
  - cannam 8y ago
    Thanks. Wish I hadn't asked.
the_duke 8y ago
FB s interest in the ecosystem with Reason might also give a nice boost in development resources for libraries and the compiler.
coldtea 8y ago
I had a look at Tezos -- which I've never seen mentioned before. If you mean this "Tezos: the self-amending cryptographic ledger" ( https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ ), this look like something done from 4 amateurs in their spare time. I don't know if it has "$200 million+" warchest, but if it does I pity the fools that gave it that.
- JeremyBanks 8y ago
  If you haven't even heard of it before, then your five second analysis of the home page isn't really worth sharing. I don't have a lot of faith in Tezos, and it's spent most of the time since its (well-known, but apparently not to you) over-funded ICO spent in legal fights over the money, instead of engineering. However, it's only fair to observe that a lot more thought and work did go into Tezos than most of the other Blockchain crap we see every day. Glancing at the marketing splash is hardly enough to assess that.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >If you haven't even heard of it before, then your five second analysis of the home page isn't really worth sharing. I'm not so sure. Besides there are lots of way more well known cryptocurrencies that are amateur hour themselves. It comes with the territory. >well-known, but apparently not to you Yeah, it's world famous among the people who follow these things...
- ericb 8y ago
  I think you have the wrong impression. This is one of the more well thought out projects in the space. Don't let the cover (marketing schlock) mislead you.
woolvalley 8y ago
For a smart contract platform, it's probably ok that ocaml isn't multithreading friendly. But what a disappointment if this is still the case: https://ib-krajewski.blogspot.com/2015/11/ocaml-and-multithreading.html https://ib-krajewski.blogspot.com/2015/11/ocaml-and-multithr... At this point, if a language doesn't have first class support for multithreading and static typing, I wouldn't start a new project in it. Nullability support is pretty high up there too, but that is a far more tractable problem.
- haskellandchill 8y ago
  Nullability? Why?
- gmfawcett 8y ago
  Modern OCaml multithreading is still a couple years away, the current (very promising) approach is still at the design/experimental stage. Out of curiosity, what is it about smart contracts that makes multithreading so important? Why isn't multiprocessing enough? [edit: sorry, I mis-read your comment. You said that multithreading probably isn't a big deal for this problem.]
  - rbjorklin 8y ago
    It doesn’t necessarily have to be that far out: https://twitter.com/kc_srk/status/994535108127404038?s=20 https://twitter.com/kc_srk/status/994535108127404038?s=20
    - gmfawcett 8y ago
      That would be very nice. I was basing my comments on these meeting notes [1], which seem a bit more conservative. (Multicore should be available experimentally in early 2019, but not ready for production use. I guess the next steps depend on how well those experiments pan out!) https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-multicore-report-on-a-june-2018-development-meeting-in-paris/2202?u=gasche https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-multicore-report-on-a-june...
  - 8y ago

by ericb 8y ago

cannam 8y ago

I hadn't heard of Tezos. Following that up I find https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/, "a new platform for smart contracts and decentralized applications", leading to http://doc.tzalpha.net/index.html http://doc.tzalpha.net/index.html which is indeed full of Ocaml stuff. Where does $200 million+ come into it? What is the history there?

ufo 8y ago
They raised that much money in their "ICO" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15503768
- cannam 8y ago
  Thanks. Wish I hadn't asked.

the_duke 8y ago

FB s interest in the ecosystem with Reason might also give a nice boost in development resources for libraries and the compiler.

coldtea 8y ago

I had a look at Tezos -- which I've never seen mentioned before. If you mean this "Tezos: the self-amending cryptographic ledger" ( https://tezos.com/ https://tezos.com/ ), this look like something done from 4 amateurs in their spare time. I don't know if it has "$200 million+" warchest, but if it does I pity the fools that gave it that.

JeremyBanks 8y ago
If you haven't even heard of it before, then your five second analysis of the home page isn't really worth sharing. I don't have a lot of faith in Tezos, and it's spent most of the time since its (well-known, but apparently not to you) over-funded ICO spent in legal fights over the money, instead of engineering. However, it's only fair to observe that a lot more thought and work did go into Tezos than most of the other Blockchain crap we see every day. Glancing at the marketing splash is hardly enough to assess that.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >If you haven't even heard of it before, then your five second analysis of the home page isn't really worth sharing. I'm not so sure. Besides there are lots of way more well known cryptocurrencies that are amateur hour themselves. It comes with the territory. >well-known, but apparently not to you Yeah, it's world famous among the people who follow these things...
ericb 8y ago
I think you have the wrong impression. This is one of the more well thought out projects in the space. Don't let the cover (marketing schlock) mislead you.

woolvalley 8y ago

For a smart contract platform, it's probably ok that ocaml isn't multithreading friendly. But what a disappointment if this is still the case: https://ib-krajewski.blogspot.com/2015/11/ocaml-and-multithreading.html https://ib-krajewski.blogspot.com/2015/11/ocaml-and-multithr... At this point, if a language doesn't have first class support for multithreading and static typing, I wouldn't start a new project in it. Nullability support is pretty high up there too, but that is a far more tractable problem.

haskellandchill 8y ago
Nullability? Why?
gmfawcett 8y ago
Modern OCaml multithreading is still a couple years away, the current (very promising) approach is still at the design/experimental stage. Out of curiosity, what is it about smart contracts that makes multithreading so important? Why isn't multiprocessing enough? [edit: sorry, I mis-read your comment. You said that multithreading probably isn't a big deal for this problem.]
- rbjorklin 8y ago
  It doesn’t necessarily have to be that far out: https://twitter.com/kc_srk/status/994535108127404038?s=20 https://twitter.com/kc_srk/status/994535108127404038?s=20
  - gmfawcett 8y ago
    That would be very nice. I was basing my comments on these meeting notes [1], which seem a bit more conservative. (Multicore should be available experimentally in early 2019, but not ready for production use. I guess the next steps depend on how well those experiments pan out!) https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-multicore-report-on-a-june-2018-development-meeting-in-paris/2202?u=gasche https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-multicore-report-on-a-june...
- 8y ago