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I was very interested in reasonml and had high hopes it would gain a lot of traction, but for an outsider, there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on reasonm

I was very interested in reasonml and had high hopes it would gain a lot of traction, but for an outsider, there doesn't seem to be a lot of activity on reasonml itself, the last release is from 18 months ago and if I'm not mistaken, there's no public repo of reasonml itself. Despite this you see projects like onivim 2 and esy using it, making me wonder if I'm missing something. Anyone here knowing what the state of reasonml development is?

huy-nguyen 7y ago
ReasonML is just the language syntax so once it has reached reasonable stability, there won’t be as much development. Most activities happen in BuckleScript compiler (OCaml to JS) and there have been a lot of substantial releases in the last 6 months. https://bucklescript.github.io/blog/ https://bucklescript.github.io/blog/
- raphinou 7y ago
  After the last release, there was some talk about async syntax. Is that abandoned? Is it really so that the reasonml language is considered basically done now?
  - osener 7y ago
    This is the PR to follow: https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/2487 https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/2487 Plans for this feature morphed into support for OCaml's new programmable let binding syntax. With the PR above merged, you'll be able to write code such as let.async users = getUsers();
    - sgrove 7y ago
      I originally thought this seemed unnecessary, but I'm using a variant of this already, and it's so much better. And I love that Reason's approach is extensible as well!
- zyang 7y ago
  So reason is like coffeescript for ocaml.
  - osener 7y ago
    More like Elixir for OCaml perhaps? It makes the good stuff in OCaml more readily available to developers with different expectations such as syntax (JS) and package management (npm).
  - dean177 7y ago
    Kinda, but with less hassle. You don't need to output ocaml files as both the native build tool (dune) and the js compiler (Bucklescript) support it out of the box.
  - mhd 7y ago
    More like ratfor, but this time with less raison d'être.
osener 7y ago
Reason language development is happening at https://github.com/facebook/reason/ https://github.com/facebook/reason/ Like huy-nguyen said, this is a tooling & ecosystem effort on top of OCaml ecosystem, and the language syntax is a small part of the effort. It's a bit scattered, but apart from ReasonReact, there is also https://reason-native.com/ https://reason-native.com/ and Esy that are parts of this bigger picture. Both OCaml and Reason communities are also quite active in producing tooling and libraries, I'd suggest following the relevant forums. I believe Reason's development momentum is not centralized around a core Reason repo/org and a team.
jasim 7y ago
The ReasonML ecosystem is evolving at a fast pace and finding adoption in the most unlikely of places (Most recently a team inside SAP for some of their front-end). However, one of the better things about Reason for me is that it is based on OCaml, which has been a rock-solid language for more than two decades. Its pace of evolution is quite measured - for example the algebraic effects work that has been happening is based on a formal academic foundation, and the implementation is often lead by researchers who wrote the actual papers. The biggest issue I can imagine when a company adopts Reason is availability of bindings to Javascript libraries. In practice this has not been much an issue for me - once you get grips with the way bindings are done in BuckleScript, creating a binding is just another thing to do. The other issue is significant upfront learning cost for the Typed functional paradigm. But it is the kind of fundamental learning that pays dividend for a long time, quite unlike learning libraries or frameworks that simply keep coming and going. I find that Reason and Elm does solve for this constant library/framework trivia-treadmill of the Javascript ecosystem admirably, helping teams achieve enough technical expertise so they can effectively create most of the building blocks they need by themselves.
k__ 7y ago
Yes, the have their blogging somehow spread across the sub projects. But it seems it's catching up to TypeScript and left all its competitors behind. https://2019.stateofjs.com/javascript-flavors/ https://2019.stateofjs.com/javascript-flavors/
jordwalke 7y ago
I'm not sure how you missed it, but right from the main Reason web page(https://reasonml.github.io/ https://reasonml.github.io/) there is a link to the Github repo for one of the ReasonML syntax (https://github.com/facebook/reason https://github.com/facebook/reason) which has a link to the latest Release on npm which was four months ago. Where did you get the 18 months figure? (You might have stumbled upon some old docs). There is also an important PR in progress for async syntax extension, which will form the next release. That Reason repo is just for the parser which is only one of the many pieces of infrastructure under the Reason umbrella (an important one though). Also follow BuckleScript, and esy for example.
- yawaramin 7y ago
  I think that may have been from https://github.com/facebook/reason/releases https://github.com/facebook/reason/releases

huy-nguyen 7y ago

ReasonML is just the language syntax so once it has reached reasonable stability, there won’t be as much development. Most activities happen in BuckleScript compiler (OCaml to JS) and there have been a lot of substantial releases in the last 6 months. https://bucklescript.github.io/blog/ https://bucklescript.github.io/blog/

raphinou 7y ago
After the last release, there was some talk about async syntax. Is that abandoned? Is it really so that the reasonml language is considered basically done now?
- osener 7y ago
  This is the PR to follow: https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/2487 https://github.com/facebook/reason/pull/2487 Plans for this feature morphed into support for OCaml's new programmable let binding syntax. With the PR above merged, you'll be able to write code such as let.async users = getUsers();
  - sgrove 7y ago
    I originally thought this seemed unnecessary, but I'm using a variant of this already, and it's so much better. And I love that Reason's approach is extensible as well!
zyang 7y ago
So reason is like coffeescript for ocaml.
- osener 7y ago
  More like Elixir for OCaml perhaps? It makes the good stuff in OCaml more readily available to developers with different expectations such as syntax (JS) and package management (npm).
- dean177 7y ago
  Kinda, but with less hassle. You don't need to output ocaml files as both the native build tool (dune) and the js compiler (Bucklescript) support it out of the box.
- mhd 7y ago
  More like ratfor, but this time with less raison d'être.

osener 7y ago

Reason language development is happening at https://github.com/facebook/reason/ https://github.com/facebook/reason/ Like huy-nguyen said, this is a tooling & ecosystem effort on top of OCaml ecosystem, and the language syntax is a small part of the effort. It's a bit scattered, but apart from ReasonReact, there is also https://reason-native.com/ https://reason-native.com/ and Esy that are parts of this bigger picture. Both OCaml and Reason communities are also quite active in producing tooling and libraries, I'd suggest following the relevant forums. I believe Reason's development momentum is not centralized around a core Reason repo/org and a team.

jasim 7y ago

The ReasonML ecosystem is evolving at a fast pace and finding adoption in the most unlikely of places (Most recently a team inside SAP for some of their front-end). However, one of the better things about Reason for me is that it is based on OCaml, which has been a rock-solid language for more than two decades. Its pace of evolution is quite measured - for example the algebraic effects work that has been happening is based on a formal academic foundation, and the implementation is often lead by researchers who wrote the actual papers. The biggest issue I can imagine when a company adopts Reason is availability of bindings to Javascript libraries. In practice this has not been much an issue for me - once you get grips with the way bindings are done in BuckleScript, creating a binding is just another thing to do. The other issue is significant upfront learning cost for the Typed functional paradigm. But it is the kind of fundamental learning that pays dividend for a long time, quite unlike learning libraries or frameworks that simply keep coming and going. I find that Reason and Elm does solve for this constant library/framework trivia-treadmill of the Javascript ecosystem admirably, helping teams achieve enough technical expertise so they can effectively create most of the building blocks they need by themselves.

k__ 7y ago

Yes, the have their blogging somehow spread across the sub projects. But it seems it's catching up to TypeScript and left all its competitors behind. https://2019.stateofjs.com/javascript-flavors/ https://2019.stateofjs.com/javascript-flavors/

jordwalke 7y ago

I'm not sure how you missed it, but right from the main Reason web page(https://reasonml.github.io/ https://reasonml.github.io/) there is a link to the Github repo for one of the ReasonML syntax (https://github.com/facebook/reason https://github.com/facebook/reason) which has a link to the latest Release on npm which was four months ago. Where did you get the 18 months figure? (You might have stumbled upon some old docs). There is also an important PR in progress for async syntax extension, which will form the next release. That Reason repo is just for the parser which is only one of the many pieces of infrastructure under the Reason umbrella (an important one though). Also follow BuckleScript, and esy for example.

yawaramin 7y ago
I think that may have been from https://github.com/facebook/reason/releases https://github.com/facebook/reason/releases