Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A better build system for OCaml

blog.janestreet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 219 posts

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#131

Post by yodsanklai »

elzbardico wrote: post #58

Whenever I see posts from Janestreet blog I laugh inside thinking how working on the financial industry at Jane is probably more fun and rewarding than some 90% of the jobs in the so-called tech industry.

Anecdote which doesn't prove anything but I have a colleague who left JS to work in FAANG after 6 months because working there was just too boring in his opinion (despite a higher salary).

Also, it's apparently significantly harder to land a position at JS than at a Google/Meta.

Actually, I applied there a while ago, the interviewer was actually pretty unpleasant, which hasn't happened to me at big tech. Didn't leave a really good impression.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#133

Post by robocat »

triyambakam wrote: post #47
Lyngbakr wrote: post #7

They did an episode of Signals and Threads (Jane Street's technical podcast) about their build systems back in 2020¥. Highly recommended, as are the other episodes, especially The Future of Programming with Richard Eisenberg° and What is an Operating System? with Anil Madhavapeddy§. ¥ https://signalsandthreads.com/build-systems/ ° https://signalsandthreads.com/future-of-programming/ § https://signalsandthreads.com/wh…

Very interesting footnote system. Is it just for fun and aesthetic or have a deeper origin or purpose?

the Chicago Manual of Style suggests this order: ⃰ (asterisk) † (dagger) ‡ (double dagger) § (section mark) ‖ (parallels) # (hash)

(Hard to present glyphs that would actually be used in print - I've chosen what I think is close - but they are not that close because wrong font)

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#134

Post by n4r9 »

eru wrote: post #116
n4r9 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mother capitalism deems that our brightest young minds best serve humanity in two tasks. Keeping the public passively scrolling, and moving money at speed to make wealthy people more wealthy.

Actually, not. These market makers are often prop shops. That means they use their own fund (prop = proprietary) to do the trading. They can do that because they don't need much capital to run. So the story here is that over the last twenty years they stole the lunch from the traditional market makers like eg banks. Of course, they got rich in the process. But they started from relatively modest means, compared to th…

Perhaps some start this way. But in terms of the general trend of talented engineers and mathematicians being sucked into this quant vortex, it is a matter of making wealthy people wealthier.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#135

Post by decafninja »

elzbardico wrote: post #58

Whenever I see posts from Janestreet blog I laugh inside thinking how working on the financial industry at Jane is probably more fun and rewarding than some 90% of the jobs in the so-called tech industry.

Jane Street and a handful of few other elite shops make up a tiny percentage of the finance industry’s tech workforce though.

There are a ton more people working in tech in finance that don’t quite have it as fun (or lucrative) as Jane Street let alone your average tech company.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#136

Post by philipwhiuk »

globular-toast wrote: post #103
smabie wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People outside the industry just use that as cope because they making way less money. "How do you live with yourself making high 6 fig / 7 figs a yr?" Quite easily in fact.

I did work in the industry briefly and can confirm it is actually full of people who would post a comment like this. Just in case anyone needed another reason to avoid it! Work on real problems. Try to make real people's lives better and happier. There are real problems in finance but my feeling was it's all very simple and solved decades ago, now it's just pointless complexity that isn't solving anyone's problems. I…

> Work on real problems. Try to make real people's lives better and happier. There are real problems in finance but my feeling was it's all very simple and solved decades ago, now it's just pointless complexity that isn't solving anyone's problems. I recommend John Kay's Other People's Money for a primer on what finance is actually good for and where it's gone wrong.

If the last few years have taught me anything it's that a large % of the population will actively aim to make their own lives worse long term because they are told lies. What benefit is there really in trying to undo their own self-inflicted damage.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#138

Post by philipwhiuk »

lmm wrote: post #83
troad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Complexity has to live somewhere . If you are lucky, it lives in well-defined places. In code where you decided a bit of complexity should go, in documentation that supports the code, in training sessions for your engineers. You give it a place without trying to hide all of it. You create ways to manage it. You know where to go to meet it when you need it. If you're unlucky and you just tried to pretend complexity…

I think that's true up to a point, but it misses the distinction between accidental and essential complexity. Essential complexity has to go somewhere, accidental complexity doesn't, and most complexity in software is accidental. And even when the complexity is essential, IMO it's better off not in the build system. I'll gladly accept more complex code for the sake of a simpler build (even though that theoretically m…

> accidental complexity doesn't, and most complexity in software is accidental.

I strongly disagree. Most software is insufficiently complex to adequately represent reality.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#139

Post by philipwhiuk »

db48x wrote: post #87
almostgotcaught wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay can you at least tell me how the architecture of https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project is "bad"?

That’s such an obnoxious tactic. It’s basically saying “Your point is invalid unless you can cut this Gordian Knot on the spur of the moment in an internet comment!”

It's less bad than the ill informed Dunning-Kruger opinion it rebuts.

Re: A better build system for OCaml

#140

Post by nvarsj »

globular-toast wrote: post #84
elzbardico wrote: post #58

Whenever I see posts from Janestreet blog I laugh inside thinking how working on the financial industry at Jane is probably more fun and rewarding than some 90% of the jobs in the so-called tech industry.

Maybe, but could you live with the fact that you're providing absolutely no value to the world? It always makes me sad when the greatest minds get gobbled up by these companies because they're creaming off the top of an enormously complex system they created.

As someone that used to work in this world I find this opinion of “no value” pretty bizarre. There’s a lot of value in efficient markets with high liquidity and low fees, which companies like JS make possible.
Post reply on HN