11 ms·

Learn OCaml

203 points by smartmic 1y ago

b0a04gl 1y ago
[dead]
hyper57 1y ago
Loved using OCaml for a compiler course at uni when I was a student. But I've always felt that the tooling side is pretty rough, especially on Windows. Opam recently added Windows support, but it involves installing MinGW, and when following the official docs https://ocaml.org/docs/installing-ocaml#install-platform-tools https://ocaml.org/docs/installing-ocaml#install-platform-too... the process breaks down with an error when trying to install utop due to a path separator error, which one has to fix manually (at least that was the case last time I tried). By comparison, installing Python or Rust on Windows is a breeze.
- lor_louis 1y ago
  Even in Linux, I'd say the tooling is a bit rough, dune and the new lsp are going in the right direction though.
  - jact 1y ago
    Dune is a very powerful and good build system — it can do some very magical and useful things. The only problem is most of these useful features are very poorly documented…
    - abathologist 1y ago
      Would be great to get concrete feedback on the docs, because a lot of energy has gone into improving them in the last 2 years: https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html
- BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
  The sluggishness of setting up new opam switches is definitely limiting in my experience
- emacdona 1y ago
  Never played with OCaml, but I spent the past few days learning about F# (my understanding is that it inherits a lot from OCaml). Tooling seemed great: I used JetBrains Rider; VSCode and Visual Studio are also options. Support seemed great: good official docs; good book choices. Ecosystem seemed great: entire .Net class library. I’m been on the JVM for 20+ years, but an opportunity came up to leverage some of my other experience to get some CLR work… and I dove in.
  - sealeck 1y ago
    F# tooling is much, much better than OCaml's
  - akkad33 1y ago
    I used to fiddle with F#, its tooling is good, but it's interweaved with too much dotnet c# cruft and also there's the dark shadow of Microsoft. I wish it had zero cost abstractions like Rust because most things you write in F# is also slower than C#
  - rpeden 1y ago
    F# has diverged from OCaml a bit, but they're still very similar. I mentioned in a top-level comment that F#'s "lightweight" syntax is basically what I want when I use OCaml. I know ReasonML is a thing, but if I'm writing OCaml I don't want it to look more JavaScripty - I prefer syntax like "match x with" over "switch(x)" for pattern matching, for example. I know some people dislike the way F#'s newer syntax makes whitespace significant, and that's fair. But the older verbose syntax is there if you need or want to use it. For example, something like let things = let a = 1 in let b = 2 in let c = 3 in doSomething a b c should still work in F# like it would in OCaml.
    - yawaramin 1y ago
      > F#'s "lightweight" syntax is basically what I want It's actually not that far off. For definitions that don't need to be self-referential you can use 'and': let things = let a = 1 and b = 2 and c = 3 in do_something a b c
luxurytent 1y ago
If I learned OCaml, what type of prospects would I have? Fairly seasoned generalist, mostly writing Go these days. Lots of plumbing with LLMs etc. Would love to learn something new but am driven by a goal in mind (ie OCaml exposes me to "X industry") Is that a thing?
- iLoveOncall 1y ago
  Learning OCaml exposes you to the sadomasochist industry, that's about it.
  - HocusLocus 1y ago
    name checks out: iLoveOCaml
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wk_end 1y ago
  Probably the biggest sectors where functional programming is used are finance and crypto (which is arguably finance). Some companies use OCaml itself, other companies might use other languages like Haskell where OCaml knowledge would be valuable. You can see a list on the OCaml website of companies using it, or read some success stories (https://ocaml.org/industrial-users https://ocaml.org/industrial-users).
- Rendello 1y ago
  The trading firm Jane Street is the big OCaml shop, they have a great podcast about all their tech. Each episode is someone from a team talking about the tool they've built, and their whole ecosystem is pretty much bespoke OCaml tooling. - https://signalsandthreads.com/ https://signalsandthreads.com/ (It's one of three programming podcasts I consistently listen to these days, the others being On The Metal and Developer Voices.)
  - xedrac 1y ago
    Bespoke tooling makes me think that the standard tooling is lacking. How does it compare to Rust's tooling?
mtlynch 1y ago
As someone interested in learning OCaml, this felt like a pretty inaccessible introduction. Having seen "A tour of Elm,"[0] I really prefer that style. The left-hand side (what English readers read first) is an explanation of the concept, then the right side is the code, and the explanation gives you enough details to complete the code. This introduction doesn't really explain anything, as I guess it assumes you've learned OCaml elsewhere and are just here to practice. I tried the first exercise, and it felt more like a math problem than an exercise to teach a programming concept: >Suppose that a variable x exists and is an integer. >Define a variable x_power_8 that uses three multiplications to calculate x to the power of 8. The only function you are allowed to call is the (*) operator. >Hint: use auxiliary variables. So, at first I thought I was supposed to just call multiply eight times, and then I realized that they said you can only call multiply three times. So, you're supposed to do let a = x * x; let b = a * a; let x_power_8 = b * b. But that feels really contrived to me and not like anything I'd write in a real application, even a toy one. If the idea is teaching variables, why not just ask me to declare a variable that represents x plus 1? [0] https://a-tour-of-elm.axelerator.de/#JSFunctions https://a-tour-of-elm.axelerator.de/#JSFunctions
- vram22 1y ago
  I have been checking out the online books "OCaml from the very beginning" and "Real World OCaml".
- lairv 1y ago
  In ocaml you would rather do something like this: let x_power_8 = (let a = x*x in let b = a*a in b*b); a, b variables are just used for computing x_power_8, you don't need them outside of this scope. I think the point of the exercise is to use variable binding, though I agree the website doesn't explain much
- cbarrick 1y ago
  For historical context, I'm pretty sure "A Tour of Elm" is inspired by the similarly formatted and similarly excellent "A Tour of Go". https://go.dev/tour/ https://go.dev/tour/
- ggerules 1y ago
fr4nkr 1y ago
Very nice site, but it seems to expect you to be following along with some other resource. The exercises each have links under the details tab, but the links are broken, and I cannot find the web pages they are supposed to be linking to.
- yawaramin 1y ago
  Maybe this helps https://dev.to/yawaramin/practical-ocaml-314j https://dev.to/yawaramin/practical-ocaml-314j
transpute 1y ago
"Thoughts on Rust vs. OCaml" (2020), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24223018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24223018 At Rust Chipotle, they have strict rules about the ingredients for your burrito. "White rice with medium salsa, sir? Absolutely not!". You see, medium salsa only goes with brown rice, and you also need to have beans or nothing works. Under no circumstances will they allow you to construct the burrito you think you want, no matter how much you think you want it. Meanwhile, at OCaml Chipotle you can have whatever you like, and it always turns out awesome. But once a month you go for lunch and they'll refuse to make you a bowl, refuse to tell you why, and refuse to let you leave. And when you try to get help from a passerby after being trapped in the store, you realize there's nobody nearby who you can ask.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Y_Y 1y ago
  Thanks, I finally understand monads!
nine_k 1y ago
BTW how about learning to use Reason, an OCaml compiler fronted with an alternative (and arguably nicer) syntax? Is it popular enough to be worth creating a "tour" app?
lucaslazarus 1y ago
Is this Jane Street propaganda?
- yawaramin 1y ago
  Careful, Jane Street propaganda could be anywhere nowadays https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/26/jane-streets-sneaky-retention-tactic https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/26/j...
  - tempodox 1y ago
    > It involves the use of an obscure, French programming language ROFL! As if the “French-ness” of OCaml were a thing in any shape, form, or way. But anything that doesn't originate in good old America has to be grotesquely exotic.
    - yawaramin 1y ago
      The Economist is a British newspaper. Maybe they would find BBC Basic a less obscure language.
  - amelius 1y ago
    https://archive.ph/u10ol https://archive.ph/u10ol
- BitterAmethyst 1y ago
  Jane Street propaganda would be better looking
another_twist 1y ago
Is OCaml still worth learning these days ? Feels like plenty of languages are evolving quite well and most things can be done in imperative langs like Go/Java with pretty concise code and certainly better perf.
- fulafel 1y ago
  Functional programming is about clarity of expression and reduced cognitive load. Aside from FP, the Ocaml type system is better than the mentioned ones. From one hand type inference means you have to write out types much less, and from the other hand the type system is more powerful and lets you express more things than Go/Java.
  - another_twist 1y ago
    Cant argue with this one. FP code is so much easier to reason about. I was looking at this more from a practical perspective.
- yawaramin 1y ago
  Both claims are debatable. Pretty concise code: Go code is full of `if err != nil {...}` song and dance and they seem pretty committed to keeping it that way. Java is stuck with decades of decisions and libraries made in their early days because they can't break backward compatibility. Eg, all the standard library collection types are mutable. And of course, both of them have the 'null pointer' problem, which OCaml doesn't. Meanwhile OCaml has had the same main type-level tools (record types, variant types) and techniques (pattern matching, first-class functions) since the very beginning and those are still the workhorse till this day. Certainly better perf: I'd say that really depends on how much tuning has been done. OCaml applications by default are fairly performant and with OCaml 5's multicore support and effect handlers will unlock even more performance wins.
  - another_twist 1y ago
    Go is definitely full of these issues. Java has pretty good perf out of the box due to JIT. The libs may be old but they do their jobs really well. Some common ones like Guava are updated as new features become available. Tbh the collections being mutable isnt really an issue since it gets the job done and reasoning about these things isnt that hard. However I do prefer immutability wherever I can get it.
aryonoco 1y ago
OCaml is nice. I like it a lot. But arguably F# (whose original name was OCaml.NET) is underrated. It improves on OCaml in a number of areas (better pattern matching, computation expressions, namespace support) but more importantly, F# solves OCaml’s biggest problems: lack of decent libraries and subpar tooling. With F# you get instant access to thousands of high quality NuGet packages which includes everything from fast web servers to highly performant json deserialisation, and you can use some of the best IDEs, tooling and debugger around (JetBrains Rider is outstanding IMO). F# suffers from the Microsoft association unfortunately, even though Microsoft barely cares about it and provides minimal support for it, most good things about F# are developed and maintained by the community. But the perception exists, and many think it’s still Windows only I’ve recently been doing a lot of F# development, I do my work on a Mac, using Rider and OCI dev containers, and the code is deployed on Kubernetes, and honestly I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed a programming language and development tooling so much.
- zeroc8 1y ago
  My dayjob involves a lot of Java, but the problem I'm working on seems to be a really good fit for a functional language. I've played around with Erlang, Elixir, Clojure and F#. The problem is that I'm always worried about getting stuck somewhere along the process and then end up regretting the decision to not use something more mainstream. But F# seems to be a real beauty.
  - yawaramin 1y ago
    If your day job is Java, learn Scala 3. It will be a mind-expanding experience.
  - throw234234234 1y ago
    Generally you won't get stuck with F#, unless you would of got stuck with C# also. The escape hatch is there, with its pros/cons. The pro is mentioned - the con being that this is where F# gets im-pure and someone with experience would immediately have patterns/team standards to deal with the boundary/usage. C# libraries generally don't have this problem (e.g. Collections, Connection Libs/SDK's, etc) since you invoke them like any other function/object - C# frameworks which invoke your code (e.g. ASP NET Core) you typically need standard code patterns to allow most of your F# code to remain pure/simple. In general though I prefer the .NET runtime than the JVM in its current state - you can go a little bit lower level when required in hot code without going unsafe (value types, spans, etc).
__rito__ 1y ago
I highly recommend this resource- OCaml Programming: Correct + Efficient + Beautiful [0]. It is very friendly, fund, and informative. It is one of the proverbial 'mind expanding' stuff. [0]: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html
- schonfinkel 1y ago
  Highly recommend this as well. Michael Ryan also has a playlist where he goes over the first book of the "Software Foundations" series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShFK9l9HYzkZugkJSsXioFs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShFK9l9HYzk... https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ A great resource for those looking to learn Rocq.
  - __rito__ 1y ago
    Wow, thanks for sharing. Now I will finally scratch my software proofs itch. ___ Typo in GP: "fun" instead of "fund"
BeetleB 1y ago
This seems a site geared towards programming exercises, and not actually teaching OCaml.
uncircle 1y ago
When I first looked at OCaml 15 years ago, it felt so complex and couldn’t wrap my head around it. Now after almost a decade with Elixir, used to functional patterns and immutable data access, I followed a course on compiler construction in OCaml [1] and it felt surprising easy and straight forward, while my attempts using regular imperative languages feel like I’m wasting time on bureaucracy and boilerplate (i.e. in C, Rust or Python) - pattern matching is such an amazing feature. 1: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html
- mejutoco 1y ago
  Not trying to deny your experience, but Rust also has match. https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/flow_control/match.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/flow_control/match...
  - uncircle 1y ago
    It's really not as ergonomic as Ocaml/Elixir.
- baby 1y ago
  I have a theory that anyone who wants to learn OCaml as their first FL will fail miserably because the docs and the user experience is horrible. But if you've spend time learning haskell then it's not that bad. BTW I could read erlang pretty well I started learning OCaml and yet that didn't help me much I felt, maybe because erlang is still much simpler?
chromatin 1y ago
Do these exercises go with a book? The only (obvious) option is to begin solving problems. If someone does not already _know_ OCaml, I fail to see how this is a way to learn. A better title might be "Practice OCaml"
rpeden 1y ago
I like OCaml a lot - but I think I like F# a little more. They're very similar, since F# as essentially Ocaml running on the .NET VM. I know some people dislike the fact that F# lacks OCaml's functors, but I can see why they weren't included. Due the the way F# integrates .NET classes/objects, I can accomplish more or less the same thing that way. In some ways I prefer it - a class/type full of static methods has the same call syntax as a module full of functions, but gives me the option of overloading the method so it'll dispatch based on argument types. Having everything that's iterable unified under IEnumerable/Seq is nice, too. Having said all that, I still enjoy OCaml a ton. One thing I wish I could have is F#'s updated lightweight syntax brought over to OCaml. I think ReasonML is great, but after using it for a while I realized that what I really want isn't OCaml that looks more like JavaScript. What I want is OCaml that looks like OCaml, but a little cleaner. F# gives me that, plus, via Fable, compilation to JS, TypeScript, Python, and Rust. And via the improved native AOT compilation in .NET 9, I can build fast and reasonably small single-file executables. Despite all that, I still try to dive in OCaml whenever it's a decent fit for a problem for the problem I'm trying to solve. Even if it's a little quirky sometimes, it's fun.
- abathologist 1y ago
  > F# as essentially Ocaml running on the .NET IMO, a language without proper modules, GADTs, or (now) an effect system, does not seem to me like it could plausibly be described as "essentially OCaml". Your point about having ad hoc polymorphism (outside of an object system) is another good point about why F# really is not OCaml on .NET. Not to mention the difference of being trapped in (or having the luxury of, as you prefer) .NET vs. compiling to native binaries. Glad you like F# tho!
lngnmn2 1y ago
[dead]
pmbanugo 1y ago
Is ocaml worth learning today? I mostly work with JS and last month picked up learning Zig and building things with it. Zig ecosystem is still early but fun to play around, plus the community folks are helpful with answering my noob questions
- abathologist 1y ago
  Yes.

203 points by smartmic 1y ago

[dead]

Loved using OCaml for a compiler course at uni when I was a student. But I've always felt that the tooling side is pretty rough, especially on Windows. Opam recently added Windows support, but it involves installing MinGW, and when following the official docs https://ocaml.org/docs/installing-ocaml#install-platform-tools https://ocaml.org/docs/installing-ocaml#install-platform-too... the process breaks down with an error when trying to install utop due to a path separator error, which one has to fix manually (at least that was the case last time I tried). By comparison, installing Python or Rust on Windows is a breeze.

lor_louis 1y ago
Even in Linux, I'd say the tooling is a bit rough, dune and the new lsp are going in the right direction though.
- jact 1y ago
  Dune is a very powerful and good build system — it can do some very magical and useful things. The only problem is most of these useful features are very poorly documented…
  - abathologist 1y ago
    Would be great to get concrete feedback on the docs, because a lot of energy has gone into improving them in the last 2 years: https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html https://dune.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html
BrawnyBadger53 1y ago
The sluggishness of setting up new opam switches is definitely limiting in my experience
emacdona 1y ago
Never played with OCaml, but I spent the past few days learning about F# (my understanding is that it inherits a lot from OCaml). Tooling seemed great: I used JetBrains Rider; VSCode and Visual Studio are also options. Support seemed great: good official docs; good book choices. Ecosystem seemed great: entire .Net class library. I’m been on the JVM for 20+ years, but an opportunity came up to leverage some of my other experience to get some CLR work… and I dove in.
- sealeck 1y ago
  F# tooling is much, much better than OCaml's
- akkad33 1y ago
  I used to fiddle with F#, its tooling is good, but it's interweaved with too much dotnet c# cruft and also there's the dark shadow of Microsoft. I wish it had zero cost abstractions like Rust because most things you write in F# is also slower than C#
- rpeden 1y ago
  F# has diverged from OCaml a bit, but they're still very similar. I mentioned in a top-level comment that F#'s "lightweight" syntax is basically what I want when I use OCaml. I know ReasonML is a thing, but if I'm writing OCaml I don't want it to look more JavaScripty - I prefer syntax like "match x with" over "switch(x)" for pattern matching, for example. I know some people dislike the way F#'s newer syntax makes whitespace significant, and that's fair. But the older verbose syntax is there if you need or want to use it. For example, something like let things = let a = 1 in let b = 2 in let c = 3 in doSomething a b c should still work in F# like it would in OCaml.
  - yawaramin 1y ago
    > F#'s "lightweight" syntax is basically what I want It's actually not that far off. For definitions that don't need to be self-referential you can use 'and': let things = let a = 1 and b = 2 and c = 3 in do_something a b c

luxurytent 1y ago

If I learned OCaml, what type of prospects would I have? Fairly seasoned generalist, mostly writing Go these days. Lots of plumbing with LLMs etc. Would love to learn something new but am driven by a goal in mind (ie OCaml exposes me to "X industry") Is that a thing?

iLoveOncall 1y ago
Learning OCaml exposes you to the sadomasochist industry, that's about it.
- HocusLocus 1y ago
  name checks out: iLoveOCaml
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wk_end 1y ago
Probably the biggest sectors where functional programming is used are finance and crypto (which is arguably finance). Some companies use OCaml itself, other companies might use other languages like Haskell where OCaml knowledge would be valuable. You can see a list on the OCaml website of companies using it, or read some success stories (https://ocaml.org/industrial-users https://ocaml.org/industrial-users).
Rendello 1y ago
The trading firm Jane Street is the big OCaml shop, they have a great podcast about all their tech. Each episode is someone from a team talking about the tool they've built, and their whole ecosystem is pretty much bespoke OCaml tooling. - https://signalsandthreads.com/ https://signalsandthreads.com/ (It's one of three programming podcasts I consistently listen to these days, the others being On The Metal and Developer Voices.)
- xedrac 1y ago
  Bespoke tooling makes me think that the standard tooling is lacking. How does it compare to Rust's tooling?

mtlynch 1y ago

As someone interested in learning OCaml, this felt like a pretty inaccessible introduction. Having seen "A tour of Elm,"[0] I really prefer that style. The left-hand side (what English readers read first) is an explanation of the concept, then the right side is the code, and the explanation gives you enough details to complete the code. This introduction doesn't really explain anything, as I guess it assumes you've learned OCaml elsewhere and are just here to practice. I tried the first exercise, and it felt more like a math problem than an exercise to teach a programming concept: >Suppose that a variable x exists and is an integer. >Define a variable x_power_8 that uses three multiplications to calculate x to the power of 8. The only function you are allowed to call is the (*) operator. >Hint: use auxiliary variables. So, at first I thought I was supposed to just call multiply eight times, and then I realized that they said you can only call multiply three times. So, you're supposed to do let a = x * x; let b = a * a; let x_power_8 = b * b. But that feels really contrived to me and not like anything I'd write in a real application, even a toy one. If the idea is teaching variables, why not just ask me to declare a variable that represents x plus 1? [0] https://a-tour-of-elm.axelerator.de/#JSFunctions https://a-tour-of-elm.axelerator.de/#JSFunctions

vram22 1y ago
I have been checking out the online books "OCaml from the very beginning" and "Real World OCaml".
lairv 1y ago
In ocaml you would rather do something like this: let x_power_8 = (let a = x*x in let b = a*a in b*b); a, b variables are just used for computing x_power_8, you don't need them outside of this scope. I think the point of the exercise is to use variable binding, though I agree the website doesn't explain much
cbarrick 1y ago
For historical context, I'm pretty sure "A Tour of Elm" is inspired by the similarly formatted and similarly excellent "A Tour of Go". https://go.dev/tour/ https://go.dev/tour/
ggerules 1y ago

fr4nkr 1y ago

Very nice site, but it seems to expect you to be following along with some other resource. The exercises each have links under the details tab, but the links are broken, and I cannot find the web pages they are supposed to be linking to.

yawaramin 1y ago
Maybe this helps https://dev.to/yawaramin/practical-ocaml-314j https://dev.to/yawaramin/practical-ocaml-314j

transpute 1y ago

"Thoughts on Rust vs. OCaml" (2020), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24223018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24223018 At Rust Chipotle, they have strict rules about the ingredients for your burrito. "White rice with medium salsa, sir? Absolutely not!". You see, medium salsa only goes with brown rice, and you also need to have beans or nothing works. Under no circumstances will they allow you to construct the burrito you think you want, no matter how much you think you want it. Meanwhile, at OCaml Chipotle you can have whatever you like, and it always turns out awesome. But once a month you go for lunch and they'll refuse to make you a bowl, refuse to tell you why, and refuse to let you leave. And when you try to get help from a passerby after being trapped in the store, you realize there's nobody nearby who you can ask.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Y_Y 1y ago
Thanks, I finally understand monads!

nine_k 1y ago

BTW how about learning to use Reason, an OCaml compiler fronted with an alternative (and arguably nicer) syntax? Is it popular enough to be worth creating a "tour" app?

lucaslazarus 1y ago

Is this Jane Street propaganda?

yawaramin 1y ago
Careful, Jane Street propaganda could be anywhere nowadays https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/26/jane-streets-sneaky-retention-tactic https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/06/26/j...
- tempodox 1y ago
  > It involves the use of an obscure, French programming language ROFL! As if the “French-ness” of OCaml were a thing in any shape, form, or way. But anything that doesn't originate in good old America has to be grotesquely exotic.
  - yawaramin 1y ago
    The Economist is a British newspaper. Maybe they would find BBC Basic a less obscure language.
- amelius 1y ago
  https://archive.ph/u10ol https://archive.ph/u10ol
BitterAmethyst 1y ago
Jane Street propaganda would be better looking

another_twist 1y ago

Is OCaml still worth learning these days ? Feels like plenty of languages are evolving quite well and most things can be done in imperative langs like Go/Java with pretty concise code and certainly better perf.

fulafel 1y ago
Functional programming is about clarity of expression and reduced cognitive load. Aside from FP, the Ocaml type system is better than the mentioned ones. From one hand type inference means you have to write out types much less, and from the other hand the type system is more powerful and lets you express more things than Go/Java.
- another_twist 1y ago
  Cant argue with this one. FP code is so much easier to reason about. I was looking at this more from a practical perspective.
yawaramin 1y ago
Both claims are debatable. Pretty concise code: Go code is full of `if err != nil {...}` song and dance and they seem pretty committed to keeping it that way. Java is stuck with decades of decisions and libraries made in their early days because they can't break backward compatibility. Eg, all the standard library collection types are mutable. And of course, both of them have the 'null pointer' problem, which OCaml doesn't. Meanwhile OCaml has had the same main type-level tools (record types, variant types) and techniques (pattern matching, first-class functions) since the very beginning and those are still the workhorse till this day. Certainly better perf: I'd say that really depends on how much tuning has been done. OCaml applications by default are fairly performant and with OCaml 5's multicore support and effect handlers will unlock even more performance wins.
- another_twist 1y ago
  Go is definitely full of these issues. Java has pretty good perf out of the box due to JIT. The libs may be old but they do their jobs really well. Some common ones like Guava are updated as new features become available. Tbh the collections being mutable isnt really an issue since it gets the job done and reasoning about these things isnt that hard. However I do prefer immutability wherever I can get it.

aryonoco 1y ago

OCaml is nice. I like it a lot. But arguably F# (whose original name was OCaml.NET) is underrated. It improves on OCaml in a number of areas (better pattern matching, computation expressions, namespace support) but more importantly, F# solves OCaml’s biggest problems: lack of decent libraries and subpar tooling. With F# you get instant access to thousands of high quality NuGet packages which includes everything from fast web servers to highly performant json deserialisation, and you can use some of the best IDEs, tooling and debugger around (JetBrains Rider is outstanding IMO). F# suffers from the Microsoft association unfortunately, even though Microsoft barely cares about it and provides minimal support for it, most good things about F# are developed and maintained by the community. But the perception exists, and many think it’s still Windows only I’ve recently been doing a lot of F# development, I do my work on a Mac, using Rider and OCI dev containers, and the code is deployed on Kubernetes, and honestly I don’t remember the last time I enjoyed a programming language and development tooling so much.

zeroc8 1y ago
My dayjob involves a lot of Java, but the problem I'm working on seems to be a really good fit for a functional language. I've played around with Erlang, Elixir, Clojure and F#. The problem is that I'm always worried about getting stuck somewhere along the process and then end up regretting the decision to not use something more mainstream. But F# seems to be a real beauty.
- yawaramin 1y ago
  If your day job is Java, learn Scala 3. It will be a mind-expanding experience.
- throw234234234 1y ago
  Generally you won't get stuck with F#, unless you would of got stuck with C# also. The escape hatch is there, with its pros/cons. The pro is mentioned - the con being that this is where F# gets im-pure and someone with experience would immediately have patterns/team standards to deal with the boundary/usage. C# libraries generally don't have this problem (e.g. Collections, Connection Libs/SDK's, etc) since you invoke them like any other function/object - C# frameworks which invoke your code (e.g. ASP NET Core) you typically need standard code patterns to allow most of your F# code to remain pure/simple. In general though I prefer the .NET runtime than the JVM in its current state - you can go a little bit lower level when required in hot code without going unsafe (value types, spans, etc).

__rito__ 1y ago

I highly recommend this resource- OCaml Programming: Correct + Efficient + Beautiful [0]. It is very friendly, fund, and informative. It is one of the proverbial 'mind expanding' stuff. [0]: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

schonfinkel 1y ago
Highly recommend this as well. Michael Ryan also has a playlist where he goes over the first book of the "Software Foundations" series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShFK9l9HYzkZugkJSsXioFs https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLre5AT9JnKShFK9l9HYzk... https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ https://softwarefoundations.cis.upenn.edu/ A great resource for those looking to learn Rocq.
- __rito__ 1y ago
  Wow, thanks for sharing. Now I will finally scratch my software proofs itch. ___ Typo in GP: "fun" instead of "fund"

BeetleB 1y ago

This seems a site geared towards programming exercises, and not actually teaching OCaml.

uncircle 1y ago

When I first looked at OCaml 15 years ago, it felt so complex and couldn’t wrap my head around it. Now after almost a decade with Elixir, used to functional patterns and immutable data access, I followed a course on compiler construction in OCaml [1] and it felt surprising easy and straight forward, while my attempts using regular imperative languages feel like I’m wasting time on bureaucracy and boilerplate (i.e. in C, Rust or Python) - pattern matching is such an amazing feature. 1: https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

mejutoco 1y ago
Not trying to deny your experience, but Rust also has match. https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/flow_control/match.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/flow_control/match...
- uncircle 1y ago
  It's really not as ergonomic as Ocaml/Elixir.
baby 1y ago
I have a theory that anyone who wants to learn OCaml as their first FL will fail miserably because the docs and the user experience is horrible. But if you've spend time learning haskell then it's not that bad. BTW I could read erlang pretty well I started learning OCaml and yet that didn't help me much I felt, maybe because erlang is still much simpler?

chromatin 1y ago

Do these exercises go with a book? The only (obvious) option is to begin solving problems. If someone does not already _know_ OCaml, I fail to see how this is a way to learn. A better title might be "Practice OCaml"

rpeden 1y ago

I like OCaml a lot - but I think I like F# a little more. They're very similar, since F# as essentially Ocaml running on the .NET VM. I know some people dislike the fact that F# lacks OCaml's functors, but I can see why they weren't included. Due the the way F# integrates .NET classes/objects, I can accomplish more or less the same thing that way. In some ways I prefer it - a class/type full of static methods has the same call syntax as a module full of functions, but gives me the option of overloading the method so it'll dispatch based on argument types. Having everything that's iterable unified under IEnumerable/Seq is nice, too. Having said all that, I still enjoy OCaml a ton. One thing I wish I could have is F#'s updated lightweight syntax brought over to OCaml. I think ReasonML is great, but after using it for a while I realized that what I really want isn't OCaml that looks more like JavaScript. What I want is OCaml that looks like OCaml, but a little cleaner. F# gives me that, plus, via Fable, compilation to JS, TypeScript, Python, and Rust. And via the improved native AOT compilation in .NET 9, I can build fast and reasonably small single-file executables. Despite all that, I still try to dive in OCaml whenever it's a decent fit for a problem for the problem I'm trying to solve. Even if it's a little quirky sometimes, it's fun.

abathologist 1y ago
> F# as essentially Ocaml running on the .NET IMO, a language without proper modules, GADTs, or (now) an effect system, does not seem to me like it could plausibly be described as "essentially OCaml". Your point about having ad hoc polymorphism (outside of an object system) is another good point about why F# really is not OCaml on .NET. Not to mention the difference of being trapped in (or having the luxury of, as you prefer) .NET vs. compiling to native binaries. Glad you like F# tho!

lngnmn2 1y ago

[dead]

pmbanugo 1y ago

Is ocaml worth learning today? I mostly work with JS and last month picked up learning Zig and building things with it. Zig ecosystem is still early but fun to play around, plus the community folks are helpful with answering my noob questions

abathologist 1y ago
Yes.