What I dislike about OCaml

[shonfeder]

@throwaway

you need to care about OCaml like it’s a “product”.

I shared my take on the very problematic nature of this POV not too long ago:

@shonfeder

If we come to think of OCaml as a product and users as customers, then we will be locked in a struggle for market dominance and we will try to compete with other languages. I think this would lead us to fall into the same trap that is driving all the structures in our civilization towards the deadly embrace of addiction to exponential growth.

Instead, I hope we will think of OCaml as an ecosystem. Then we’ll aim to maintain its current health and sustainability, and protect the diversity and life that is already at home here. But we will also strive to provide more fertile grounds for diversity (which entails diversity of uses and users and, principle among many other things, concern with accessibility, in the sense of empowering those with relative disability). We should also look to build mutualistic systems of exchange with other ecosystems. But above all, I think this calls for maintaining healthy (and kind) relationships between the various people and organizations within the ecosystem. I think this is what allows new entrants to the ecosystem to find a safe place to take root.

There is so much we want to do: to improve our community, to further the development of our common language, to build out our tooling, to make our culture more inclusive and inviting, to strengthen its mutualistic connections with other communities… So much to do, and so little time in this fraught world.

Having granted that there is very much to do to nurture the OCaml ecosystem and confirming that it is well worth doing, I’d also like to remember that successful technology and communities ought not have size or popularity as their primary measure. There are many amazing technologies that provide high value in very particular niches (to name a few Prolog, Z3, Mirage) and there are many healthy and vibrant communities that do not end up becoming massive trends and contending domination in the world mono-culture (and I’m not sure how healthy the communities are that do end up contending thus).

I was inspired to add this delayed reply by the following photo of a slide from RustConf:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZaa6ObUEAEEED_?format=jpg&name=large