4 ms·

A developer at our place did our log search tool in OCaml, the reason being "because I've never worked with it before". It had to be scrapped shortly after he l

by aliswe 5y ago

A developer at our place did our log search tool in OCaml, the reason being "because I've never worked with it before". It had to be scrapped shortly after he left.

fsloth 5y ago
Naur's classic essay (and maybe my favorite essay in all of software engineering) "Programming as theory building" [0 ] comes to mind. If the theory of the program is lost then it's quite hard to continue work no matter what the language used. Based on your description it might as well have been scrapped regardless of the programming language used? [0] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf
- aliswe 5y ago
  No, the problem is that hardly noone had even heard of OCaml, much less had any experience with any functional language, much less knew how to maintain this tool. My point is that it was very tone deaf to introduce a new technology onto the stack for this reason (so called resume-based development I think?).
  - Kototama 5y ago
    I doubt it, ocaml has very little job offers. Didn't you have a process or better communication to avoid this situation?
    - aliswe 5y ago
      You doubt what exactly? Nah we hardly had any processes at all back then.
      - Kototama 5y ago
        I doubt it's for the resume because there are very few ocaml jobs.
        hiptobecubic 5y ago
        You don't need to find a job that wants ocaml, just a job that recognizes what it means that you've written it.
Kototama 5y ago
It sounds like you had a smart developer that needed more challenges at work :) ?
LAC-Tech 5y ago
Ocaml is not a particularly hard language IMHO. If anyone had wanted to learn, they would have learned. Sounds like the real issue is you wanted to write your own log tool.
willcipriano 5y ago
People who make statements like this always seem to be programming language operators rather than computer scientists. If you are good you can make almost anything work.
- stonemetal12 5y ago
  Or they could be engineers. Cost benefit of learning a new language to support something designed and built in random language by some one who didn't actually know how to do high quality design work in that language is rather low. It is like reading the first Turkish works of an English poet, who decided to learn Turkish by writing poems.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    None of what you mentioned is the fault of the language. Turkish isn't a bad language, you are bad at Turkish.
TurboHaskal 5y ago
So it had to be scrapped due to the same reason why it got written in the first place. Poetic.
- aliswe 5y ago
  indeed!
rixed 5y ago
You forgot to say why it had to be scrapped ?
- aliswe 5y ago
  consistent stack that we can find competence for!
keewee7 5y ago
>because I've never worked with it before Yeah, that is the wrong reason to pick a new language to build an internal tool.
postalrat 5y ago
So another developer thought they could do it better and used ocaml as the excuse?
Zababa 5y ago
This says a lot more about your place than about OCaml, so I'm not sure why you mention this here.
squeaky-clean 5y ago
I heard about similar story from some old coworkers. I left the company because it always had a problem with good communication, devs being siloed, etc... A "python dev" left the company. A different python dev was assigned to maintain his projects. They were surprised to find out all of ex-employee's "python" projects over the past 2 years were actually written in Rust. There was absolutely no code review in his department so no one was aware of this! No one else at the company knew Rust and they were debating rewriting it all, or hiring a Rust dev. My old coworkers were basically putting all the blame on that one guy. And sure, that's shitty and unprofessional of him. But how could someone write Rust for 2 years and no one else notices?? I didn't understand how they could blame the guy and also not feel supremely embarrassed for even getting into that situation.
- maupin 5y ago
  I'm guessing he was hired for Python then decided to learn Rust by doing a few work-related tasks in Rust and it snowballed.

by aliswe 5y ago

A developer at our place did our log search tool in OCaml, the reason being "because I've never worked with it before". It had to be scrapped shortly after he left.

fsloth 5y ago

Naur's classic essay (and maybe my favorite essay in all of software engineering) "Programming as theory building" [0 ] comes to mind. If the theory of the program is lost then it's quite hard to continue work no matter what the language used. Based on your description it might as well have been scrapped regardless of the programming language used? [0] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/Naur.pdf

aliswe 5y ago
No, the problem is that hardly noone had even heard of OCaml, much less had any experience with any functional language, much less knew how to maintain this tool. My point is that it was very tone deaf to introduce a new technology onto the stack for this reason (so called resume-based development I think?).
- Kototama 5y ago
  I doubt it, ocaml has very little job offers. Didn't you have a process or better communication to avoid this situation?
  - aliswe 5y ago
    You doubt what exactly? Nah we hardly had any processes at all back then.
    - Kototama 5y ago
      I doubt it's for the resume because there are very few ocaml jobs.
      - hiptobecubic 5y ago
        You don't need to find a job that wants ocaml, just a job that recognizes what it means that you've written it.

Kototama 5y ago

It sounds like you had a smart developer that needed more challenges at work :) ?

LAC-Tech 5y ago

Ocaml is not a particularly hard language IMHO. If anyone had wanted to learn, they would have learned. Sounds like the real issue is you wanted to write your own log tool.

willcipriano 5y ago

People who make statements like this always seem to be programming language operators rather than computer scientists. If you are good you can make almost anything work.

stonemetal12 5y ago
Or they could be engineers. Cost benefit of learning a new language to support something designed and built in random language by some one who didn't actually know how to do high quality design work in that language is rather low. It is like reading the first Turkish works of an English poet, who decided to learn Turkish by writing poems.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  None of what you mentioned is the fault of the language. Turkish isn't a bad language, you are bad at Turkish.

TurboHaskal 5y ago

So it had to be scrapped due to the same reason why it got written in the first place. Poetic.

aliswe 5y ago
indeed!

rixed 5y ago

You forgot to say why it had to be scrapped ?

aliswe 5y ago
consistent stack that we can find competence for!

keewee7 5y ago

>because I've never worked with it before Yeah, that is the wrong reason to pick a new language to build an internal tool.

postalrat 5y ago

So another developer thought they could do it better and used ocaml as the excuse?

Zababa 5y ago

This says a lot more about your place than about OCaml, so I'm not sure why you mention this here.

squeaky-clean 5y ago

I heard about similar story from some old coworkers. I left the company because it always had a problem with good communication, devs being siloed, etc... A "python dev" left the company. A different python dev was assigned to maintain his projects. They were surprised to find out all of ex-employee's "python" projects over the past 2 years were actually written in Rust. There was absolutely no code review in his department so no one was aware of this! No one else at the company knew Rust and they were debating rewriting it all, or hiring a Rust dev. My old coworkers were basically putting all the blame on that one guy. And sure, that's shitty and unprofessional of him. But how could someone write Rust for 2 years and no one else notices?? I didn't understand how they could blame the guy and also not feel supremely embarrassed for even getting into that situation.

maupin 5y ago
I'm guessing he was hired for Python then decided to learn Rust by doing a few work-related tasks in Rust and it snowballed.