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?
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
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.
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-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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
picked up ocaml back when prepping for some interview round, didn’t expect much just wanted the functional knowledge. but later used it for advent of code and it just worked so clean. pattern matching, recursion, immutabilitty.. fits those problems naturally. ended up liking the language way more than planned.
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?
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.
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.
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.
OCaml is like nim, not many ppl knows about, but it is one those tech once over the learning curve it just gives developer an extra edge.
It is a very good alternative to memory safe language such as Rust and Swift. It is just NOT backed by big corporations. Which some might see it as a disadvantage, IMHO it is an advantage. Look at Perl, Linux, Hono all initially made by one guy.
With out a big group, golden handcuffs and corporate politics, things might actually gets done.
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.
The VS Code plugin is, like, 90% of the developer experience of most devs. The fact that it's rock-solid in OCaml should automatically bump us up to at least a B grade. Meanwhile the dune build system is powerful and flexible, and compile times are actually blazing fast, unlike Rust's famous slow builds. So yeah, there are pros and cons on each side, I wouldn't say it's a clear win.
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://go.dev/tour/
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
Context is needed... at least some explanation or bridge examples, like... why and what do I need to navigate this particular web landing page.
Website feels like an author exercise in ocaml for js web plugin.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
You can see a list on the OCaml website of companies using it, or read some success stories (https://ocaml.org/industrial-users).
It is a very good alternative to memory safe language such as Rust and Swift. It is just NOT backed by big corporations. Which some might see it as a disadvantage, IMHO it is an advantage. Look at Perl, Linux, Hono all initially made by one guy.
With out a big group, golden handcuffs and corporate politics, things might actually gets done.
- 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.)
imagine everything that's good about Rust tooling but significantly less good or non-existent instead
(the VS Code plugin for OCaml is actually decent though)
At one point, I believe KDE[0] had OCaml integrations and/or community support.
0 - https://kde.org/