Ask HN: Is it worht learning OCaml?

3 points by gazarullz 9y ago ↗ HN

I am looking into learning OCaml, from the first glance it looks quite interesting as programming language, I like the pattern matching and the functional side. Beside exploratory learning are there any real opportunities in learning this language? What about a good editor to use with it (I am currently using vim)

7 comments

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chmaynard 9y ago ↗

You might want to learn Standard ML first. The "Programming Languages, Part A" course on Coursera is a good place to start.

gazarullz 9y ago ↗

Thanks for the tip, how does ML compare to OCaml from an applicability perspective ?

rbehrends 9y ago ↗

Smaller ecosystem, multiple compilers, simpler language (which can be both good and bad).

NonEUCitizen 9y ago ↗

Yes, if you want to work for Jane Street Capital.

gazarullz 9y ago ↗

I am aware Jane Street employs OCaml, is there any other company that is relying on it ?

afrisch 9y ago ↗

Here is an obviously incomplete list: http://ocaml.org/learn/companies.html

ngzhian 9y ago ↗

Yes!

A useful tool for writing OCaml in Vim is Merlin [0].

Facebook uses OCaml as well [1] [2] [3]

A great tutorial is [4]

[0] https://github.com/ocaml/merlin

[1] https://github.com/facebook/reason

[2] https://github.com/facebook/flow/

[3] https://github.com/facebook/infer

[4] http://realworldocaml.org/