5 ms·

A bit off-topic but the post title will probably attract relevant people. What are the thoughts on OCaml on HN?

by erwinh 3y ago

cccbbbaaa 3y ago
It replaced Python for everything longer than a couple hundred of lines long for me. Fast language, fast compile times, clean(-ish) syntax, strong typing system, good ecosystem, and now multicore support? Yes please! I must be more nuanced, though: existing libraries in opam are generally very, very good (I really like cmdliner), but many things may be missing. There is no alternative to Django, for instance. No serious IDE, except emacs. The standard library was so lacking that there is at least an alternative. The situation improved, but there's still missing stuff compared to Python.
- amelius 3y ago
  Do you make GUIs in OCaml, and which libraries do or would you use? And how about scientific computing (SciPy), deep learning (PyTorch etc.), or computational geometry (Shapely etc.)?
  - yw3410 3y ago
    GUIs are a PITA like in most languages. I think most people use something which binds to gtk (such as lablgtk) or Qt. For scientific computing there is Owl, but I haven't used it personally.
    - amelius 3y ago
      Hmm, I'll stick with Python for now. The ecosystem of libraries is just too good. Perhaps if OCaml made it very easy to interoperate with Python, I could give it a chance.
      - yw3410 3y ago
        There is pyml for interopt but I've never used it.
  - xvilka 3y ago
    Lablgtk[1][2] for GUI, Owl[3][4] for scientific computing. [1] https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/ https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/ [2] https://github.com/garrigue/lablgtk https://github.com/garrigue/lablgtk [3] https://ocaml.xyz/ https://ocaml.xyz/ [4] https://github.com/owlbarn/owl https://github.com/owlbarn/owl
- mattpallissard 3y ago
  > There is no alternative to Django, for instance. https://aantron.github.io/dream/ https://aantron.github.io/dream/, which is new and used by ocaml.org as well as OP > No serious IDE, except emacs and vim, and visual studio, and whatever else supports the LSP protocol via https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp > The standard library was so lacking that there is at least an alternative. While janestreet does have an publish their own stdlib, I personally try to stick to the stdlib whenever possible. Not to knock janestreet. I'm glad they're around and have contributed a bunch. But overall I agree with you. It's been my favorite language to write in for years now. You can't just reach for off-the-shelf libraries for every little thing. Although the ones that do exist tend to be written halfway decently.
  - winrid 3y ago
    Dream is not a Django alternative. Django's powers come from probably one of (the best?) best ORMs in the industry, along with generated database schema migrations, and generated admin panels, to name a few. There's also the Django Rest Framework which makes putting together REST apis generated from your models super easy.
    - mst 3y ago
      Quite possibly the best for everything up to moderately complex. You'd want to enter sqlalchemy (python), DBIx::Class (perl) and arguably Sequel (ruby) into the competition for 'best' though (I'm sticking to dynamic languages here) - exposed power and ability to drop to SQL for only parts of a query vary substantially between options.
      - winrid 3y ago
        On a related note I've been keeping an eye out for a really good ORM in a typed language that is good with relationships without tons of boilerplate, I guess it's hard to do. Hibernate has way too many annotations for my liking, and I'm not into the code generation of JOOQ. I bet you could build it in Nim pretty easily with its compile time stuff. Diesel might get there in a few years... :) I know people are gonna judge the whole ORM thing, but writing raw SQL is nice for performance but not for getting something out quickly, or prototyping, when you have lots of relationships.
- still_grokking 3y ago
  I've heard good things about OCaml in general. But "no serious IDE, except emacs" is a non-starter imho, if it's true. They should really invest in this. Otherwise the language won't attract any professional developers in the large.
  - yw3410 3y ago
    Vscode works since there is an LSP server.
  - trenchgun 3y ago
    It is not true, as other commenters have said.
- mdaniel 3y ago
  > No serious IDE, except emacs. https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9440-reasonml https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9440-reasonml (72k downloads) https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18531-ocaml https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18531-ocaml (2k downloads) I'm not in the ocaml ecosystem enough to evaluate their quality, but anything on top of IJ is for sure a serious IDE
zem 3y ago
one of my favourite languages! not so much for its (excellent) technical qualities, but just as a matter of personal taste - it joined ruby and racket in a short list of languages that just feel nice to program in. (i suspect D would join that list too but despite being interested in it for a while i haven't yet had a compelling project to use it for.)
WorldMaker 3y ago
I haven't used OCaml much directly, but F# is a common enough tool in my toolbelt at this point. My experience of F# is that overall it's a good language family. The access to .NET's standard library (the BCL) and easy interop with C# are the biggest reasons F# is the tool I more often reach to as it already fits the ecosystem most of my other development is in, but I'd love to work more directly with OCaml should the need arise.
yodsanklai 3y ago
It's my favorite language by far! Pros: type safe, GC, fast, (arguably) a simple and practical language if you have a functional mindset (much simpler and pragmatic than Haskell IMHO). Cons: it's a niche language, so tooling/libraries/online help aren't on par with more mainstream languages. No canonical standard library (different codebases will use different standard libraries and even disagree on pervasive functions such as List.map). Whenever the code uses monad (e.g. concurrency monad / error handling), I find the language loses its simplicity. Maybe it's true of every languages but I'm disappointed by some OCaml codebases where often two extreme cohabit 1. people who don't know the language and don't write idiomatic code (like, refusing to write .mli, abusing imperative features) 2. OCaml experts who over-engineer things and want to use the latest features and make the code hard to read/maintain In a professional settings, it can be hard to have these two populations coexisting, and people tend to be quite opinionated when it comes to such languages (love it or hate it -> it's often a source of struggle).
jolux 3y ago
OCaml is a great language but I would probably choose F# if I had to pick a language for a new project because of libraries.

A bit off-topic but the post title will probably attract relevant people. What are the thoughts on OCaml on HN?

by erwinh 3y ago

A bit off-topic but the post title will probably attract relevant people. What are the thoughts on OCaml on HN?

It replaced Python for everything longer than a couple hundred of lines long for me. Fast language, fast compile times, clean(-ish) syntax, strong typing system, good ecosystem, and now multicore support? Yes please! I must be more nuanced, though: existing libraries in opam are generally very, very good (I really like cmdliner), but many things may be missing. There is no alternative to Django, for instance. No serious IDE, except emacs. The standard library was so lacking that there is at least an alternative. The situation improved, but there's still missing stuff compared to Python.

amelius 3y ago
Do you make GUIs in OCaml, and which libraries do or would you use? And how about scientific computing (SciPy), deep learning (PyTorch etc.), or computational geometry (Shapely etc.)?
- yw3410 3y ago
  GUIs are a PITA like in most languages. I think most people use something which binds to gtk (such as lablgtk) or Qt. For scientific computing there is Owl, but I haven't used it personally.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Hmm, I'll stick with Python for now. The ecosystem of libraries is just too good. Perhaps if OCaml made it very easy to interoperate with Python, I could give it a chance.
    - yw3410 3y ago
      There is pyml for interopt but I've never used it.
- xvilka 3y ago
  Lablgtk[1][2] for GUI, Owl[3][4] for scientific computing. [1] https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/ https://garrigue.github.io/lablgtk/ [2] https://github.com/garrigue/lablgtk https://github.com/garrigue/lablgtk [3] https://ocaml.xyz/ https://ocaml.xyz/ [4] https://github.com/owlbarn/owl https://github.com/owlbarn/owl
mattpallissard 3y ago
> There is no alternative to Django, for instance. https://aantron.github.io/dream/ https://aantron.github.io/dream/, which is new and used by ocaml.org as well as OP > No serious IDE, except emacs and vim, and visual studio, and whatever else supports the LSP protocol via https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp > The standard library was so lacking that there is at least an alternative. While janestreet does have an publish their own stdlib, I personally try to stick to the stdlib whenever possible. Not to knock janestreet. I'm glad they're around and have contributed a bunch. But overall I agree with you. It's been my favorite language to write in for years now. You can't just reach for off-the-shelf libraries for every little thing. Although the ones that do exist tend to be written halfway decently.
- winrid 3y ago
  Dream is not a Django alternative. Django's powers come from probably one of (the best?) best ORMs in the industry, along with generated database schema migrations, and generated admin panels, to name a few. There's also the Django Rest Framework which makes putting together REST apis generated from your models super easy.
  - mst 3y ago
    Quite possibly the best for everything up to moderately complex. You'd want to enter sqlalchemy (python), DBIx::Class (perl) and arguably Sequel (ruby) into the competition for 'best' though (I'm sticking to dynamic languages here) - exposed power and ability to drop to SQL for only parts of a query vary substantially between options.
    - winrid 3y ago
      On a related note I've been keeping an eye out for a really good ORM in a typed language that is good with relationships without tons of boilerplate, I guess it's hard to do. Hibernate has way too many annotations for my liking, and I'm not into the code generation of JOOQ. I bet you could build it in Nim pretty easily with its compile time stuff. Diesel might get there in a few years... :) I know people are gonna judge the whole ORM thing, but writing raw SQL is nice for performance but not for getting something out quickly, or prototyping, when you have lots of relationships.
still_grokking 3y ago
I've heard good things about OCaml in general. But "no serious IDE, except emacs" is a non-starter imho, if it's true. They should really invest in this. Otherwise the language won't attract any professional developers in the large.
- yw3410 3y ago
  Vscode works since there is an LSP server.
- trenchgun 3y ago
  It is not true, as other commenters have said.
mdaniel 3y ago
> No serious IDE, except emacs. https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9440-reasonml https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9440-reasonml (72k downloads) https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18531-ocaml https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18531-ocaml (2k downloads) I'm not in the ocaml ecosystem enough to evaluate their quality, but anything on top of IJ is for sure a serious IDE

zem 3y ago

one of my favourite languages! not so much for its (excellent) technical qualities, but just as a matter of personal taste - it joined ruby and racket in a short list of languages that just feel nice to program in. (i suspect D would join that list too but despite being interested in it for a while i haven't yet had a compelling project to use it for.)

WorldMaker 3y ago

I haven't used OCaml much directly, but F# is a common enough tool in my toolbelt at this point. My experience of F# is that overall it's a good language family. The access to .NET's standard library (the BCL) and easy interop with C# are the biggest reasons F# is the tool I more often reach to as it already fits the ecosystem most of my other development is in, but I'd love to work more directly with OCaml should the need arise.

yodsanklai 3y ago

It's my favorite language by far! Pros: type safe, GC, fast, (arguably) a simple and practical language if you have a functional mindset (much simpler and pragmatic than Haskell IMHO). Cons: it's a niche language, so tooling/libraries/online help aren't on par with more mainstream languages. No canonical standard library (different codebases will use different standard libraries and even disagree on pervasive functions such as List.map). Whenever the code uses monad (e.g. concurrency monad / error handling), I find the language loses its simplicity. Maybe it's true of every languages but I'm disappointed by some OCaml codebases where often two extreme cohabit 1. people who don't know the language and don't write idiomatic code (like, refusing to write .mli, abusing imperative features) 2. OCaml experts who over-engineer things and want to use the latest features and make the code hard to read/maintain In a professional settings, it can be hard to have these two populations coexisting, and people tend to be quite opinionated when it comes to such languages (love it or hate it -> it's often a source of struggle).

jolux 3y ago

OCaml is a great language but I would probably choose F# if I had to pick a language for a new project because of libraries.