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I do have one ear for that argument that "everything ought to be simpler". But what I've observed over and over is that many systems tends to become more compl

by rixed 2y ago

I do have one ear for that argument that "everything ought to be simpler". But what I've observed over and over is that many systems tends to become more complex as the result of people wanting to make them more newbie friendly. That's certainly true of the last 10 years of Ocaml tooling evolution.

pdimitar 2y ago
I guess you could argue both ways and it depends on your starting point. I did not mean to say "make it newbie friendly", I meant "I want adding a dependency to my project to be a 10 seconds job, not a week-long endeavor". If we both start from that point then I think we might find a common ground.
- rixed 2y ago
  Yes it does very much depend on your starting point. For instance, coming from C Unix programming, it took me 2 hours to try OCaml 15 years ago or so, because Ocaml tooling, at that time, was the same as C. Basically, I made a generic rule for my makefiles to call ocamlopt instead of gcc and I was good to go. Installing a dependency was just the usual "./configure && make install" This was simple for me, but not for students with no Unix background. In that context "opam install" was simpler, although it's objectively more complex as it adds a few additional layers on top of the same process.
  - pdimitar 2y ago
    Yep, it's about your background. I moved away from makefiles long ago and I don't regret it, for a multitude of reasons that are well explained in many places. `cargo add ...` is great and I wish every language offered a tool like that.
    - rixed 2y ago
      Even when i use cargo or go or node, make is still needed to build everything that's not just code.
      - pdimitar 2y ago
        If you say so. There are plenty of tools that can do more or less the same without having to remember weird bash-isms and pattern expansion rules. I use `just` for project tasks, but there are many others.
        rixed 2y ago
        I know there are many others, but make does any job, is very simple (once you have realized that recursive make is not needed for decades), is not tied to a specific environment, had been around for ages and will still be around 20 years from now. I don't think I'm easily satisfied with tools, but I have never had a reason to look for another tool that would solve a problem i don't have.
        sshine 2y ago
        If you like Makefile, you’ll like Just.
      - sshine 2y ago
        > make is still needed You mean: I still need make For example, build.rs replaces some uses of a makefile. > build everything that's not just code Have you heard of: Just, Nix, Bazel, Helm, Terraform? Depending on the situation, there are many things you can build that aren't strictly code where you can use a bunch of other tools than make.

by rixed 2y ago

pdimitar 2y ago

I guess you could argue both ways and it depends on your starting point. I did not mean to say "make it newbie friendly", I meant "I want adding a dependency to my project to be a 10 seconds job, not a week-long endeavor". If we both start from that point then I think we might find a common ground.

rixed 2y ago
Yes it does very much depend on your starting point. For instance, coming from C Unix programming, it took me 2 hours to try OCaml 15 years ago or so, because Ocaml tooling, at that time, was the same as C. Basically, I made a generic rule for my makefiles to call ocamlopt instead of gcc and I was good to go. Installing a dependency was just the usual "./configure && make install" This was simple for me, but not for students with no Unix background. In that context "opam install" was simpler, although it's objectively more complex as it adds a few additional layers on top of the same process.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  Yep, it's about your background. I moved away from makefiles long ago and I don't regret it, for a multitude of reasons that are well explained in many places. `cargo add ...` is great and I wish every language offered a tool like that.
  - rixed 2y ago
    Even when i use cargo or go or node, make is still needed to build everything that's not just code.
    - pdimitar 2y ago
      If you say so. There are plenty of tools that can do more or less the same without having to remember weird bash-isms and pattern expansion rules. I use `just` for project tasks, but there are many others.
      - rixed 2y ago
        I know there are many others, but make does any job, is very simple (once you have realized that recursive make is not needed for decades), is not tied to a specific environment, had been around for ages and will still be around 20 years from now. I don't think I'm easily satisfied with tools, but I have never had a reason to look for another tool that would solve a problem i don't have.
        sshine 2y ago
        If you like Makefile, you’ll like Just.
    - sshine 2y ago
      > make is still needed You mean: I still need make For example, build.rs replaces some uses of a makefile. > build everything that's not just code Have you heard of: Just, Nix, Bazel, Helm, Terraform? Depending on the situation, there are many things you can build that aren't strictly code where you can use a bunch of other tools than make.