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Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

discuss.ocaml.org

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Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#61

Post by weeniehutjr420 »

vmchale wrote: post #46
steev wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't understand why OCaml doesn't have mass adoption. Probably for the exact same reason each year you think about learning OCaml you decide not to (I mean this sincerely, not trying to be snide). I think the main reasons it doesn't see mass adoption in industry: * There are only two major companies that do a substantial amount of OCaml that I can think of off the top of my head, Jane Street and Ahrefs. Facebook…

> Facebook does some OCaml too Using an ML or a Lisp for language tooling is the way to go. Nothing else in that league.

How about Haskell?

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#62

Post by zucker42 »

doteka wrote: post #9
G4BB3R wrote: post #7

Each year I think wether should I learn OCaml or not. What is the current state of multi-thread OCaml? Is that a game changer or just a cool feature? I can't understand why OCaml doesn't have mass adoption.

I think Rust kind of stole OCaml’s thunder. It has most of the same benefits, with a mostly familiar syntax and a lot of industry buy-in. And with recent versions, I never find myself fighting the borrow checker like I used to.

I don't know. I think Scala and F# have stolen OCaml's thunder more than Rust. While Rust has been inspired by ML, OCaml and Rust have much different usecases.

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#63

Post by jimbokun »

Bukhmanizer wrote: post #39
fluffything wrote: post #22

Skimming through this book, one thing i was constantly wondering, is how well does this ocaml framework use the hardware. Leaving ocaml aside, the connection between scientific computing and hardware is the one thing I miss the most in "scientific computing" books and courses, because it sooner or later limits the science that any researcher doing scientific computing can do. To give an example, earlier this week, on…

Let’s face it, is this researcher ever going to read a book on scientific computing in OCaml? Most researchers won’t even read a book on scientific computing.

Why do you think that?

That's like saying "most programmers would never read a book about science, or finance...", or whatever field they are writing software for.

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#64

Post by rich_sasha »

pjmlp wrote: post #60
rich_sasha wrote: post #35

I'm beginning to think of learning either OCaml or F# for data sciency-kind of things. Any points of comparison between those? Library ecosystem seems better on F#, but I must admit I'm somewhat wary of the behemoth that is .NET . What else should I consider?

Depends on the science domain. I have spent a couple of years doing .NET for life sciences, as many labs are mostly focused on Windows due to their laboratory robots and data readers. So many researchers end up using a mix of Excel, VBA and MFC (old tech) and Forms/WPF (new tech) based tooling. If that is your data science domain, I would definitely advise F#.

That's pretty far from my domain, TBH. Definitely not Windows if I can avoid it, Linux or Mac, cmdline applications, maybe simple web apps.

Would you then dis-recommend F#, or merely not recommend it for Windows compatibility?

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#65

Post by ihnorton »

> Indexing, slicing, and broadcasting are three fundamental functions to manipulate multidimensional arrays.

...

> Indexing and slicing is arguably the most important function in any numerical library.

These statements are undoubtedly true. The first question any practitioner familiar with other systems will ask is: what does basic arithmetic, array manipulation, and linear algebra look like?

But from what I can tell on a very quick skim, that question isn't really answered until the section starting with these sentences, on page 123. I've noticed this situation every time I look at the Owl docs webpage too, FWIW (have not looked recently though).

I understand the need to be perceived as fully-capable for modern tasks -- and that's fine for a 2-4 page set of teaser examples up front -- but I think this book would become much more approachable if the basic mechanics of doing math were presented first.

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#68

Post by srean »

ihnorton wrote: post #65

> Indexing, slicing, and broadcasting are three fundamental functions to manipulate multidimensional arrays. ... > Indexing and slicing is arguably the most important function in any numerical library. These statements are undoubtedly true. The first question any practitioner familiar with other systems will ask is: what does basic arithmetic, array manipulation, and linear algebra look like? But from what I can tell…

If anyone wants a quick access to see how slicing and indexing is done https://ocaml.xyz/book/slicing.html

An older thread on HN on slicing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20457884

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#69

Post by jpz »

rich_sasha wrote: post #35

I'm beginning to think of learning either OCaml or F# for data sciency-kind of things. Any points of comparison between those? Library ecosystem seems better on F#, but I must admit I'm somewhat wary of the behemoth that is .NET . What else should I consider?

F# for the tooling. Jetbrains Rider is particuarly good. Unfortunately Visual Studio on Windows is a bit lacking.

If you get a feel for F# I'm sure it will be an easy leap to OCaml if you decide to do it later.

Incidentally I've just been running through the Advent of Code in F# over the last few days - I do think the toolset for F# is very kind for a new learner.

Re: Draft of OCaml Scientific Computing book

#70

Post by mseri »

7thaccount wrote: post #34
mseri wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the kindness! There is actually a GNUPlot backend for Owl. Works very well, but is a bit lowlevel: https://github.com/hennequin-lab/gp Similarly, I use https://github.com/mseri/ocaml-gr but it is a safe lowlevel binding. I hope one day to have the time to wrap it into an interface similar to Julia's one.

Not a problem at all. Thanks for chatting and sending the links. I wish you the best on this project. Maybe it will help get OCaml some additional/well-deserved attention and love. I'll keep my eye on the project too. Is anyone working on data frames?

I am only aware of the discussion at https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-vega-lite-and-ocaml-datafr... and at this chapter of the book: https://ocaml.xyz/book/dataframe.html

I don’t think there is work going on on that side of owl at the moment if this is what you are asking.

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