# Academic OCaml Users Testimonials! **URL:** \ **Category:** Site Feedback\ **Created:** [March 21, 2024, 12:07pm UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338 "2024-03-21T12:07:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Claire\_Vandenberghe](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/claire_vandenberghe/32/5198_2.png) [@Claire\_Vandenberghe](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/Claire_Vandenberghe)\ **Post date:** [March 21, 2024, 12:07pm UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/1 "2024-03-21T12:07:07Z")
**Are you an academic user of OCaml?** By sharing your testimonial, you’re not only showcasing your expertise and experience but also contributing to the OCaml community. Your insights can help prospective users understand the academic value of OCaml and inspire them to explore its potential further. Your testimonial will be featured on our academic user page, inspiring others to explore OCaml’s potential. **Tell us:** 1- Your name and academic affiliation. 2 - A brief description of how you’ve used OCaml in your academic endeavors. 3 -Your thoughts on the benefits and challenges of using OCaml. Thanks [OCaml.org](http://OCaml.org) Team ---
**Author:** ![UnixJunkie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/unixjunkie/32/638_2.png) [@UnixJunkie](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/UnixJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 22, 2024, 1:20am UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/2 "2024-03-22T01:20:20Z")
Some years ago, I wrote a testimonial in an invited paper: Chemoinformatics and structural bioinformatics in OCaml > **[Chemoinformatics and structural bioinformatics in OCaml - Journal of...](https://jcheminf.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13321-019-0332-0)** > > Background OCaml is a functional programming language with strong static types, Hindley–Milner type inference and garbage collection. In this article, we share our experience in prototyping chemoinformatics and structural bioinformatics software in... ---
**Author:** ![sabine](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/sabine/32/4147_2.png) [@sabine](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/sabine)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2024, 11:20am UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/3 "2024-03-25T11:20:37Z")
Hey @UnixJunkie, this looks great! I think there’s a paragraph from the “Conclusion” section that could be made into a fine testimonial: > To us, OCaml has been proven quite productive for > software prototyping in Chemoinformatics and Struc- > tural Bioinformatics method development. The software > demonstrated here were used intensively and timely dur- > ing scientific validation campaigns, on many molecules > and protein targets. We have never regretted our choice > of OCaml and still use it today. > > Francois Berenger , Kam Y. J. Zhang and Yoshihiro Yamanishi - in “Chemoinformatics and structural bioinformatics in OCaml” (_Journal of Cheminformatics volume 11_, Article number: 10 (2019)). Does it look acceptable to you to feature this as sketched here on [Academic Users of OCaml](http://ocaml.org/academic-users)? ---
**Author:** ![UnixJunkie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/unixjunkie/32/638_2.png) [@UnixJunkie](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/UnixJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2024, 12:30am UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/4 "2024-03-26T00:30:20Z")
This is quite a mouthful of a citation, but of course you can cite the article. I definitely recommend OCaml for scientific (or even system / backend) software prototyping. The performance of the final software in production is very good and it will almost never crash on you (compared to Python programs…). ---
**Author:** ![smondet](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/smondet/32/111_2.png) [@smondet](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/smondet)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2024, 3:47pm UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/5 "2024-03-26T15:47:09Z")
Another aspect where OCaml shines in science/academia is the long term backwards compatibility and clear & static build processes. I’ve had feedback from people successfully running code I had not touched in more than a decade. On the other hand I have witnessed bioinformatics postdocs wasting months of their lives just trying to run python/perl/c++ artifacts that came with papers that were barely a couple of years old. ---
**Author:** ![UnixJunkie](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/unixjunkie/32/638_2.png) [@UnixJunkie](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/UnixJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2024, 12:53am UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/6 "2024-03-27T00:53:52Z")
I have witnessed Python programs/libraries not compiling anymore just a few months after having been released… ---
**Author:** ![mobileink](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex020/user_avatar/discuss.ocaml.org/mobileink/32/3295_2.png) [@mobileink](https://discuss.ocaml.org/u/mobileink)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2024, 8:00pm UTC](https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/academic-ocaml-users-testimonials/14338/7 "2024-03-27T20:00:01Z")
Anybody using OCaml for linguistics?