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I'm quite happy to see that every week one or two quality OCaml articles are posted on HN and lobste.rs. OCaml doesn't have the general appeal of JavaScript, t

I'm quite happy to see that every week one or two quality OCaml articles are posted on HN and lobste.rs. OCaml doesn't have the general appeal of JavaScript, the innovation factor of Rust, the get-shit-done reputation of Go, but it deserves to be more widely known.

vezzy-fnord 12y ago
The Rust language itself has a noticeably heavy ML influence.
- haifeng 12y ago
  An ML with many C notations :)
- Chattered 12y ago
  Its first compiler was written in Ocaml.
agumonkey 12y ago
It's funny because ml languages are a lot less alien to the mainstream than before. Things people are used to: - `let` keyword (rust, ES6) - pattern matching (generalization of ES6 destructuring) - function first, HOF combinators (ES5 functional literature) - tuples (python) A few years back, all these would appear as black magic...
- amirmc 12y ago
  You might find the intro to Real World OCaml interesting as these ideas have percolated out from languages such as OCaml. It's great if that helps lower the barrier for people to try it out. https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html#why-ocaml https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html#why-ocam...
haifeng 12y ago
Thanks for bring Rust into the topic. I know that it is very new. But still wonder if some real life projects are using it (except rustc).
- Rusky 12y ago
  Mozilla Servo is a browser engine written in Rust; skylight.io is a Ruby Gem written in Rust. Then there are several smaller projects for game engines, web server stuff, cryptography, etc.
wtetzner 12y ago
It doesn't have the get-shit-done reputation of Go, but it should. I personally find that OCaml is a very pragmatic language.
- gnuvince 12y ago
  Oh, absolutely!
- zimbatm 12y ago
  What's the story for building a little HTTP server or command-line tool ? Go has a great batteries-included standard library.
  - ufo 12y ago
    The Ocaml standard library is pretty shitty (you certaily want to use one of the many stdlib replacements) but Opam is pretty neat for 3rd party libraries (albeit some areas are a bit fragmented for historical reasons).
    - jallmann 12y ago
      > The Ocaml standard library is pretty shitty Oh come on, it's not that bad, it's just minimal. Usually I can get pretty far without having to reach for something like Batteries. That's a good thing, especially when writing reusable libraries where you don't necessarily want to pull in an entire stdlib replacement.
      - tel 12y ago
        I'm really hoping as I've explored it more and more that the lightweight standard lib is a boon more than a weakness... but to achieve this there needs to be major force to drive useful functionality down into canonical library packages.
        amirmc 12y ago
        > "there needs to be major force to drive useful functionality down into canonical library packages" This tends to happen over time, as the community naturally converges on certain libraries, but it's rather opaque for a new user as to what those are. In some cases, you end up with two options and then life is a little more complicated (cf. async and lwt).

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

The Rust language itself has a noticeably heavy ML influence.

haifeng 12y ago
An ML with many C notations :)
Chattered 12y ago
Its first compiler was written in Ocaml.

agumonkey 12y ago

It's funny because ml languages are a lot less alien to the mainstream than before. Things people are used to: - `let` keyword (rust, ES6) - pattern matching (generalization of ES6 destructuring) - function first, HOF combinators (ES5 functional literature) - tuples (python) A few years back, all these would appear as black magic...

amirmc 12y ago
You might find the intro to Real World OCaml interesting as these ideas have percolated out from languages such as OCaml. It's great if that helps lower the barrier for people to try it out. https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html#why-ocaml https://realworldocaml.org/v1/en/html/prologue.html#why-ocam...

haifeng 12y ago

Thanks for bring Rust into the topic. I know that it is very new. But still wonder if some real life projects are using it (except rustc).

Rusky 12y ago
Mozilla Servo is a browser engine written in Rust; skylight.io is a Ruby Gem written in Rust. Then there are several smaller projects for game engines, web server stuff, cryptography, etc.

wtetzner 12y ago

It doesn't have the get-shit-done reputation of Go, but it should. I personally find that OCaml is a very pragmatic language.

gnuvince 12y ago
Oh, absolutely!
zimbatm 12y ago
What's the story for building a little HTTP server or command-line tool ? Go has a great batteries-included standard library.
- ufo 12y ago
  The Ocaml standard library is pretty shitty (you certaily want to use one of the many stdlib replacements) but Opam is pretty neat for 3rd party libraries (albeit some areas are a bit fragmented for historical reasons).
  - jallmann 12y ago
    > The Ocaml standard library is pretty shitty Oh come on, it's not that bad, it's just minimal. Usually I can get pretty far without having to reach for something like Batteries. That's a good thing, especially when writing reusable libraries where you don't necessarily want to pull in an entire stdlib replacement.
    - tel 12y ago
      I'm really hoping as I've explored it more and more that the lightweight standard lib is a boon more than a weakness... but to achieve this there needs to be major force to drive useful functionality down into canonical library packages.
      - amirmc 12y ago
        > "there needs to be major force to drive useful functionality down into canonical library packages" This tends to happen over time, as the community naturally converges on certain libraries, but it's rather opaque for a new user as to what those are. In some cases, you end up with two options and then life is a little more complicated (cf. async and lwt).