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I've used OCaml at day-jobs for the past couple of years. It has an excellent concurrency story, and I've used OCaml for lots of "boring" work (web services, da

I've used OCaml at day-jobs for the past couple of years. It has an excellent concurrency story, and I've used OCaml for lots of "boring" work (web services, database drivers, data processing, etc).

giraffe_lady 4y ago
I really think it's such a good fit for most of the daily non-web work I've had to do. It lets you keep the core logic clean & fun and then you can just shrug and let rip with the mutations or whatever when that makes the most sense. I'm well out of my FP fanboy phase now but ocaml feels great for my favorite parts of that without being judgmental when I'm not in the mood.
- anuragsoni 4y ago
  > It lets you keep the core logic clean & fun and then you can just shrug and let rip with the mutations or whatever when that makes the most sense. Very true! I've used mutations and imperative OCaml quite a few times. Sometimes it was for performance reasons (I've been working on a web server library), and other times when loops either made the implementation a little easier to read, and/or helped avoid some allocations. I am glad that the language is pragmatic enough that I can still use mutation or imperative code where it makes sense, while still being able to present a nice clean api on top.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
Wait how did you go about finding ocaml day jobs? I pretty much never even tried it seems so niche, and jane street doesn't appeal to me at all. I sneak it in at my jobs when I can justify it but it seems like there are very very few jobs that use it primarily.
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I think FB uses OCaml at least to some extent.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Yeah I think that's a good example of what I mean though. That'll be a couple tiny teams within a huge org, with a lot of people willing/desiring to transfer internally onto it. Those rarely if ever get filled from outside the org, and when they do they're looking for experts not competent part-time users.
- anuragsoni 4y ago
  The first time was hearing about a startup that used OCaml on one of the monthly hackernews Who is hiring thread. The current day job was also somewhat similar in that I had read about a startup's job listing on the OCaml forum [1], checked with them again a while later (the startup was acquired by another company), and found an open role on the team that continued to use OCaml after the acquisition. > it but it seems like there are very very few jobs that use it primarily. I completely agree. I never tried looking for an OCaml job mostly because there weren't enough options at-least in the US (I'm based in USA), and I am picky about who I work for and wasn't interested in exploring job opportunities at companies working on cryptocurrencies. I just got lucky that I stumbled upon two different companies that used OCaml. The first time around I applied for the job because of OCaml, the second time around it was because I liked the company and OCaml was an added bonus on top. [1] https://discuss.ocaml.org/ https://discuss.ocaml.org/
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Ugh yeah that pretty much confirms what I suspected. It's a few huge players using it for small internal projects, jane street, and a bunch of crypto shit I'm not willing to touch. The language I work in is not even one of my top priorities when looking for work, but still it would be cool. I'm lucky enough to have enough freedom to work in it from time to time, which is good enough for me. Thanks for the response!
    - anuragsoni 4y ago
      > The language I work in is not even one of my top priorities when looking for work, but still it would be cool. Same! I've made the mistake of overlooking certain things just because I wanted to get some real world OCaml experience in the past, and I will not make the same mistake again. At my current job I mostly use OCaml and Python, with some Typescript for whenever I need to touch a frontend application. As much as I like using OCaml, I'm more thrilled about working on a team where I enjoy working with everyone, and having a work environment that provides flexibility about picking the best tool for a job. Most of my OCaml hacking still takes place on my free time, and on my personal open-source explorations :-) > Thanks for the response! You are welcome! Sorry if my responses weren't too useful with respect to using OCaml at work.

I've used OCaml at day-jobs for the past couple of years. It has an excellent concurrency story, and I've used OCaml for lots of "boring" work (web services, database drivers, data processing, etc).

giraffe_lady 4y ago

I really think it's such a good fit for most of the daily non-web work I've had to do. It lets you keep the core logic clean & fun and then you can just shrug and let rip with the mutations or whatever when that makes the most sense. I'm well out of my FP fanboy phase now but ocaml feels great for my favorite parts of that without being judgmental when I'm not in the mood.

anuragsoni 4y ago
> It lets you keep the core logic clean & fun and then you can just shrug and let rip with the mutations or whatever when that makes the most sense. Very true! I've used mutations and imperative OCaml quite a few times. Sometimes it was for performance reasons (I've been working on a web server library), and other times when loops either made the implementation a little easier to read, and/or helped avoid some allocations. I am glad that the language is pragmatic enough that I can still use mutation or imperative code where it makes sense, while still being able to present a nice clean api on top.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

Wait how did you go about finding ocaml day jobs? I pretty much never even tried it seems so niche, and jane street doesn't appeal to me at all. I sneak it in at my jobs when I can justify it but it seems like there are very very few jobs that use it primarily.

whimsicalism 4y ago
I think FB uses OCaml at least to some extent.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Yeah I think that's a good example of what I mean though. That'll be a couple tiny teams within a huge org, with a lot of people willing/desiring to transfer internally onto it. Those rarely if ever get filled from outside the org, and when they do they're looking for experts not competent part-time users.
anuragsoni 4y ago
The first time was hearing about a startup that used OCaml on one of the monthly hackernews Who is hiring thread. The current day job was also somewhat similar in that I had read about a startup's job listing on the OCaml forum [1], checked with them again a while later (the startup was acquired by another company), and found an open role on the team that continued to use OCaml after the acquisition. > it but it seems like there are very very few jobs that use it primarily. I completely agree. I never tried looking for an OCaml job mostly because there weren't enough options at-least in the US (I'm based in USA), and I am picky about who I work for and wasn't interested in exploring job opportunities at companies working on cryptocurrencies. I just got lucky that I stumbled upon two different companies that used OCaml. The first time around I applied for the job because of OCaml, the second time around it was because I liked the company and OCaml was an added bonus on top. [1] https://discuss.ocaml.org/ https://discuss.ocaml.org/
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Ugh yeah that pretty much confirms what I suspected. It's a few huge players using it for small internal projects, jane street, and a bunch of crypto shit I'm not willing to touch. The language I work in is not even one of my top priorities when looking for work, but still it would be cool. I'm lucky enough to have enough freedom to work in it from time to time, which is good enough for me. Thanks for the response!
  - anuragsoni 4y ago
    > The language I work in is not even one of my top priorities when looking for work, but still it would be cool. Same! I've made the mistake of overlooking certain things just because I wanted to get some real world OCaml experience in the past, and I will not make the same mistake again. At my current job I mostly use OCaml and Python, with some Typescript for whenever I need to touch a frontend application. As much as I like using OCaml, I'm more thrilled about working on a team where I enjoy working with everyone, and having a work environment that provides flexibility about picking the best tool for a job. Most of my OCaml hacking still takes place on my free time, and on my personal open-source explorations :-) > Thanks for the response! You are welcome! Sorry if my responses weren't too useful with respect to using OCaml at work.