6 ms·

What is the probability of Ocaml/Reason becoming mainstream?

by galfarragem 8y ago

xor1 8y ago
23%
- k__ 8y ago
  I say 30%! I have no idea, Reason is pretty rad, but I have the feeling since 3.0 it lost steam. I mean they still didn't add async/await
  - TheAsprngHacker 8y ago
    To my knowledge, Reason is just an alternate syntax over OCaml and the two can be converted to each other. Thus, Reason should have the same semantics as OCaml. As OCaml isn’t just targeted at JavaScript, IMO adding async/await sugar for Reason wouldn’t make sense. (I assume that you mean syntax that desugars to JS promises. Correct me if I misunderstood.) Although, it would be pretty cool if OCaml got some kind of do-notation (like Haskell), a generalization of async/await sugar for any monad structure...
    - thedufer 8y ago
      I think you're looking for let syntax (https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let). It is syntactic sugar for monads and applicatives.
rezeroed 8y ago
I don't see why these two are being lumped together. I see ReasonML needs OCaml, but not that OCaml needs ReasonML. OCaml I expect will become increasingly mainstream - I've started using it instead of rust on personal projects. ReasonML would increase exposure to OCaml, but OCaml in no way needs it to succeed.
- dudul 8y ago
  Interesting, I really like OCaml myself but see it mostly as a fringe language as of today. What makes you think it will become more mainstream?
  - rezeroed 8y ago
    I think it hits a sweet spot. Not as boring as Go, not as obstinate and distracting as Rust ("I'm sorry, Dave"), not purely functional for those who don't want to go all the way in that direction. I expect people who try those languages and decide "not quite" might try OCaml and find it more flexible and elegant. It's appearing more often in the "who's hiring" posts. There are the characteristics such as compilation speed vs others which could do with being, ahem, compiled into a post somewhere, if not already.
    - joshmarlow 8y ago
      > not purely functional for those who don't want to go all the way in that direction That's why I first loved it. I liked what I knew of Haskell but was skeptical of the Monadic IO system (I've since warmed to the idea). OCaml was in a perfect sweet spot in my opinion. Also it feels a bit less abstract in some difficult to define way - I don't think Monads really clicked for me until I was using Options in OCaml. I'll also second the opinion that as a _language_ OCaml is more ergonomic than Rust. However, I find that Rust is more _community ergonomic_ - it's easier to find libraries and contribute to them. Related to that - the build process is just spot-on. With OCaml, I found myself tripping over obscure errors in my build process about every month or so. For me, OCaml is a bit like the one that got away. But I'm excited about the momentum behind the Reason project!
- gmfawcett 8y ago
  It doesn't seem odd to me to lump them together. Reason is just an alternate syntax for Ocaml, and because of this the "Reason toolchain" is usable with Ocaml code as well, and with mixed Reason/Ocaml projects.
- hajile 8y ago
pome 8y ago
It's mainstream in compiler writing - Hack, Haxe, WebAssembly (Interpreter and Parser), Rust before self-hosting. :-))
icc97 8y ago
Reason calls itself Javascript 2030. That's not a completely unreasonable time line for ML languages to go from the small percentage that they have now to being in the top say 5-10 languages used. React has made the probability much higher. Reason is kinda like JS the good parts + Immutable JS + Typescript + Redux. Plus it works well with React. If your team is using React there's a good chance you'd get a benefit from implementing Reason in a few places with little risk.
snaky 8y ago
It depends on very random factors and events, like with (almost) any other programming language. How could anybody rate a probability of some experimental language from Sun research lab - the tiny, fast, garbage-collected, object-oriented language for embedded systems to become mainstream - before the language was renamed from Oak to Java?

What is the probability of Ocaml/Reason becoming mainstream?

xor1 8y ago

23%

k__ 8y ago
I say 30%! I have no idea, Reason is pretty rad, but I have the feeling since 3.0 it lost steam. I mean they still didn't add async/await
- TheAsprngHacker 8y ago
  To my knowledge, Reason is just an alternate syntax over OCaml and the two can be converted to each other. Thus, Reason should have the same semantics as OCaml. As OCaml isn’t just targeted at JavaScript, IMO adding async/await sugar for Reason wouldn’t make sense. (I assume that you mean syntax that desugars to JS promises. Correct me if I misunderstood.) Although, it would be pretty cool if OCaml got some kind of do-notation (like Haskell), a generalization of async/await sugar for any monad structure...
  - thedufer 8y ago
    I think you're looking for let syntax (https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let https://github.com/janestreet/ppx_let). It is syntactic sugar for monads and applicatives.

rezeroed 8y ago

I don't see why these two are being lumped together. I see ReasonML needs OCaml, but not that OCaml needs ReasonML. OCaml I expect will become increasingly mainstream - I've started using it instead of rust on personal projects. ReasonML would increase exposure to OCaml, but OCaml in no way needs it to succeed.

dudul 8y ago
Interesting, I really like OCaml myself but see it mostly as a fringe language as of today. What makes you think it will become more mainstream?
- rezeroed 8y ago
  I think it hits a sweet spot. Not as boring as Go, not as obstinate and distracting as Rust ("I'm sorry, Dave"), not purely functional for those who don't want to go all the way in that direction. I expect people who try those languages and decide "not quite" might try OCaml and find it more flexible and elegant. It's appearing more often in the "who's hiring" posts. There are the characteristics such as compilation speed vs others which could do with being, ahem, compiled into a post somewhere, if not already.
  - joshmarlow 8y ago
    > not purely functional for those who don't want to go all the way in that direction That's why I first loved it. I liked what I knew of Haskell but was skeptical of the Monadic IO system (I've since warmed to the idea). OCaml was in a perfect sweet spot in my opinion. Also it feels a bit less abstract in some difficult to define way - I don't think Monads really clicked for me until I was using Options in OCaml. I'll also second the opinion that as a _language_ OCaml is more ergonomic than Rust. However, I find that Rust is more _community ergonomic_ - it's easier to find libraries and contribute to them. Related to that - the build process is just spot-on. With OCaml, I found myself tripping over obscure errors in my build process about every month or so. For me, OCaml is a bit like the one that got away. But I'm excited about the momentum behind the Reason project!
gmfawcett 8y ago
It doesn't seem odd to me to lump them together. Reason is just an alternate syntax for Ocaml, and because of this the "Reason toolchain" is usable with Ocaml code as well, and with mixed Reason/Ocaml projects.
hajile 8y ago

pome 8y ago

It's mainstream in compiler writing - Hack, Haxe, WebAssembly (Interpreter and Parser), Rust before self-hosting. :-))

icc97 8y ago

Reason calls itself Javascript 2030. That's not a completely unreasonable time line for ML languages to go from the small percentage that they have now to being in the top say 5-10 languages used. React has made the probability much higher. Reason is kinda like JS the good parts + Immutable JS + Typescript + Redux. Plus it works well with React. If your team is using React there's a good chance you'd get a benefit from implementing Reason in a few places with little risk.

snaky 8y ago

It depends on very random factors and events, like with (almost) any other programming language. How could anybody rate a probability of some experimental language from Sun research lab - the tiny, fast, garbage-collected, object-oriented language for embedded systems to become mainstream - before the language was renamed from Oak to Java?