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Why I love OCaml (2023)

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Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#261

Post by jibal »

Syzygies wrote: post #209
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suggest that people interested in using OCaml on Windows (or indeed, OCaml at all) try F# instead. It is still an ML-family language. Incidentally, by targeting the CLR, F# is considerably more deployable (both to users and to developers) than OCaml is. Plus, any old NuGet library written in C# or VB.NET can be used almost trivially in F#. This also solves the problem OP listed about a tiny ecosystem, because…

To decide on a language for a math research project, I implemented a toy problem in many languages: What is the distribution of cycle counts for signed permutations on n letters? Use all cores in parallel. C++ 100 19.57s Rust 96 20.40s F# 95 20.52s Nim 75 26.04s Julia 64 30.40s Ocaml 48 41.07s Haskell 41 47.64s Chez 39 49.53s Swift 33 58.46s Lean 7 278.88s Tarjan, n = 10 Nyx - Apple M4 Max - 12 performance and 4 effi…

What about D? Can you post any of the 10 source codes?

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#263

Post by graemep »

aeonik wrote: post #260
graemep wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Python became popular before Go came out. Do you mean the comic was responsible, or the comic explains why Python is popular? It is definitely the ecosystem. As you said its general purpose. It is used for numerical computing and visualisation, web apps, GUIs, sysadmin. Even a reasonably popular DVCS is written in Python.

I wrote: “Right as Python was rocketing in popularity, Go came out.” I wasn’t talking chronology of first release, just describing the overlap in hype cycles back then. The comic was released in 2007, and started heading to the moon. Go came out around 2009, and almost instantly got traction.

I do not mean to disagree with just, just wanted to clarify some wording and add to the "general purpose aspect of Python.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#264

Post by rixed »

pshirshov wrote: post #153

> why isn’t OCaml more popular? Hashtbl.add table key value Precedence, nominal inheritance, HKTs, incoherent typeclasses make Scala much less aesthetically pleasant but much more productive.

  Hashtbl.add table key value
What's your point with that?

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#265

Post by atombender »

agentultra wrote: post #103

Why isn't it more popular? I think Richard Feldman [0] proposed some of the most reasonable theories as to why functional programming isn't the norm. Your language needs to be the platform-exclusive language for a widely used platform, have a killer application for a highly desired application domain, or be backed by a monster war-chest of marketing money to sway opinions. Since Feldman's talk, Python has grown much…

I look at how people write TypeScript these days, and think about how the world might have been different if, 10-15 years ago, these functional languages had been a bit closer to the imperative world. OCaml allows mutation and side effects and could even feel a bit imperative if it weren't for the "let ... in" syntax.

Let's face it, syntax matters. We saw that with Elixir becoming much more popular than Erlang ever did. We saw it with TypeScript being able to introduce a fairly complex type system into JavaScript, and becoming successful among web devs by adapting to established ecosystem and offering a gradual approach, rather than forcing an entirely new, incompatible paradigm on it. The TypeScript story seems a little improbable in hindsight, but it was able to get there by offering an incremental path and making a lot of compromises (such as config options to allow less strict enforcement) along the way.

Personally, I think a new syntax for OCaml might actually be successful if done right. Sure, there have been multiple attempts (the "revised" syntax, Reason, etc.), but none of them are really willing to modernize in ways that would attract your average programmer. The toolchain also needs work to appeal to non-OCaml programmers.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#266

Post by octachron »

codesnik wrote: post #257
mbac32768 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll give you my top 3. F# is worse because the type inferencing isn't as good. You need to type annotate in more places. It's a drag, because it feels like a missed opportunity to let the machine do work for you. Additionally, one of the most pleasant and unique features of OCaml, strong named arguments, doesn't exist in F# (except in methods or whatever). Most programming languages don't have this (or it's hamfiste…

interesting. how named arguments work with currying?

Nearly the same as with positional argument: Partially applying a function to a named argument creates a closure with this argument filled in, and you can apply the argument in whichever order you want:

    let f a ~x ~y b = a + x + y + b
    let g = f ~y:1 (* g is closure with the argument named ~y filled in *)
    let h = g 2 (* another closure with the first positional argument filled in *)
    let int_15 = h 8 ~x:4 (* = g 2 8 ~y:4 = f ~y:1 2 8 ~x:4 *)
The more complex interaction is rather with type inference and currying, or the interaction between currying and optional arguments.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#267

Post by olivia-banks »

hyperhopper wrote: post #228
olivia-banks wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? I’m not that familiar with Go anymore.

Search any Go codebase for err != nil, for starters.

Well, sure, but this is a problem nearly as old as Go itself. I thought they were referring to larger more recent things, like how generics work, or something to that effect.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#268

Post by mikaeluman »

throwa567543 wrote: post #227
mikaeluman wrote: post #143

I like the ML languages, and as many others I spent a lot of time with F#. I would love to spend more time but even though Microsoft gives it plenty of support (nowhere near as much as C#), the community is just too small (and seems to have gotten smaller). Looking at https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ numbers fall off pretty quickly from the top 5-7. Guessing this is the same for OCaml, even if the language as such…

Anecdotally we are using F# more than ever before, and it works for us for a large sized organisation. Fast code, it is keeping up with the .NET features that matter for that (e.g. spans), and tbh has still been getting better over the years. In fact I find some of the new features like Span, SIMD/intrinsics somewhat synergise with existing F# features (e.g. inline). C# IMO still hasn't quite caught up but is getting…

Interesting take. I agree with you mostly but regarding "community" I am more thinking of the side effects there in terms of _other_ people developing interesting libraries etc.

I don't know if AI can change that but when using python, there is a feeling that there is an awesome quality library for just about anything.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#269

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

spooky_deep wrote: post #183
olivia-banks wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that functional programming is probably one of the only domains where linked lists actually make sense. Vectors certainty have their use in more places though.

A good compiler will make the lists disappear in many cases. No runtime overhead. I actually love single linked lists as a way to break down sequences of problem steps.

Ah yes, our old friend - the sufficiently smart compiler.

Re: Why I love OCaml (2023)

#270

Post by galvatron9k »

olivia-banks wrote: post #267
hyperhopper wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search any Go codebase for err != nil, for starters.

Well, sure, but this is a problem nearly as old as Go itself. I thought they were referring to larger more recent things, like how generics work, or something to that effect.

> is a problem nearly as old as Go itself

It's as old as C. C and Go are the only two significant languages which end up constantly checking for errors like this.

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