The talk on Batteries at Houston Functional Programmers last night by @UnixJunkie was really fantastic, and people got a lot out of it. And it was great to see faces (or at least names ) from around here. One thing that surprised me a bit was how many questions there were about OCaml coding in general (rather than specifically Batteries).
This suggests to me that doing a virtual āOCaml Office Hoursā could be successful and really valuable for the community. Just an opportunity for peopleāespecially novicesāto come with their questions about OCaml, programming problems theyāve run into, etc. Iāll be happy to organize and promote it, but what weād need is 1-3 people to act as experts and answer peopleās questions. (I definitely donāt know enough to serve in this role.)
Because of time zone differences, if thereās interest in organizing something similar in Europe or elsewhere, I could help out with that as well. Iām in Houston, TX and would want to organize the event for a weeknight, probably ~7-9pm (U.S. Central time).
I am not an expert by any objective measure, but I know enough that I could be of help to beginner and intermediate learners. I could commit to being present once a month or so. Iām in US Eastern time.
In addition to mailing lists and discuss, there is also an IRC channel where people can interact with some ocaml experts in a more āinteractiveā manner (irc://irc.freenode.net/#ocaml)
Sounds like thereās enough interest to give this a shot and see what the response is. @shonfeder ā Iāll message you and we can figure out a time and date in Feb thatās good for us. Thanks for volunteering. I probably should have put āexpertā in quotes. We donāt need experts per se for something like this ā just enough collective experience that weāre able to answer peopleās questions and so itās productive and useful. And fun!
Thanks for initiating this, @cjr ! I think more spaces for connection and camaraderie can only help our community in general, and itās especially welcome in these trying times.
Iād like to volunteer as an expert if you have room. Iām not a PL PhD kind of expert, but I have worked with OCaml professionally for about 12 years now.
Iām a working manās programmer as well. All of my āexpertiseā is gained from years of programming in OCaml. Happy to help people or just make banter around OCaml.
Save the date: Thur, Feb 11 at 7pm U.S. Central. @shonfeder, @mbacarella, @rgrinberg, and I will be hosting āOCaml Cafe,ā an opportunity to get answers to your OCaml questions and, more generally, hang out with the community. I will post additional details within the next few days.
maybe we could collect some questions and/or topics to discuss beforehand
I would propose to use the OCaml discord channel as the video conference hosting platform because it is already quite popular among OCaml enthusiasts and discordās video conferencing is quite good
Sure, if people want to send me questions/topics ahead of time, please do. But itās not necessary. Our goal is to let the interests of those attending drive the discussion.
Itāll be hosted on Zoom, as thatās what my university has with all of the enterprisey features - and what I already know.
) from around here. One thing that surprised me a bit was how many questions there were about OCaml coding in general (rather than specifically Batteries).