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> In OCaml, it feels like people spend an awful lot of time discussing Functors. I mean, if you want to use OCaml and not even bother to want to learn about f

> In OCaml, it feels like people spend an awful lot of time discussing Functors. I mean, if you want to use OCaml and not even bother to want to learn about functors, which are fundamental to the module system, then I don't know what to say. It would be somewhat like wanting to use Java and not learn how to use classes.

throwaway894345 6y ago
The point is that the community’s interest appears to be in abstract language design and not building software products.
- monoideism 6y ago
  I suppose someone who had no exposure to OOP would say the same to a group discussing a object-based approach to solving a problem. That said, the OCaml community is very interested in using the type system to eliminate entire classes of errors (eg,"make illegal states unrepresentable"). Rust community is the same. Jane Street has built a multi-billion dollar company using this approach. If you view such as "abstract language design", then your loss.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    To be clear, the claim isn't that other communities never discuss academic concerns, but that they are also interested in the practical aspects of building software products while OCaml is (more or less) singularly focused on the academic aspects. Yes, the Rust community is interested in the academic aspects of eliminating classes of errors, but it's also very interested in addressing pragmatic problems. Consider all of the sites for Are We (Web | GameDev | IDE | etc) Yet as well as the remarkable progress they've made in such a short time. Rust's entire history fits in the amount of time that OCaml has been struggling to solve parallelism. > Jane Street has built a multi-billion dollar company using this approach. If you view such as "abstract language design", then your loss. That's really great for Jane Street, but it's really not the badge of honor you (and the rest of the OCaml community) think it is that a single company has managed to muster some success with your preferred language in its 25 year history. It also doesn't do much to illustrate that the OCaml community is broadly interested in practical matters--only that one community has done, and they have done a lot of work to make OCaml manageable (like Google has done with Go, except that Go enjoys marketshare outside of Google).

throwaway894345 6y ago

The point is that the community’s interest appears to be in abstract language design and not building software products.

monoideism 6y ago
I suppose someone who had no exposure to OOP would say the same to a group discussing a object-based approach to solving a problem. That said, the OCaml community is very interested in using the type system to eliminate entire classes of errors (eg,"make illegal states unrepresentable"). Rust community is the same. Jane Street has built a multi-billion dollar company using this approach. If you view such as "abstract language design", then your loss.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  To be clear, the claim isn't that other communities never discuss academic concerns, but that they are also interested in the practical aspects of building software products while OCaml is (more or less) singularly focused on the academic aspects. Yes, the Rust community is interested in the academic aspects of eliminating classes of errors, but it's also very interested in addressing pragmatic problems. Consider all of the sites for Are We (Web | GameDev | IDE | etc) Yet as well as the remarkable progress they've made in such a short time. Rust's entire history fits in the amount of time that OCaml has been struggling to solve parallelism. > Jane Street has built a multi-billion dollar company using this approach. If you view such as "abstract language design", then your loss. That's really great for Jane Street, but it's really not the badge of honor you (and the rest of the OCaml community) think it is that a single company has managed to muster some success with your preferred language in its 25 year history. It also doesn't do much to illustrate that the OCaml community is broadly interested in practical matters--only that one community has done, and they have done a lot of work to make OCaml manageable (like Google has done with Go, except that Go enjoys marketshare outside of Google).