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Comment by srpablo | Hacker News Reader

While I didn't try to use Docker (though we did use the same pxhere image :-p), I also struggled to get a productive setup of OCaml. Getting a switch running wasn't the hard part, it was making the environment suitable for real project work. I had a set of Make targets in mind (test, build, shell), some language dev features I wanted (jump to definition, type of expression under cursor), and some properties of the project (pinned dependencies) such that it took a fair bit of fiddling with dune/opam to get it working https://morepablo.com/2019/08/fresco-jesus-ocaml-setup.html

I find OCaml really enjoyable once I got going, but I do think the initial setup is a major barrier to larger adoption. I think a post on howistart.org might be useful, but it'd probably be polarizing since most functions have two major ways of doing it (Jane Street vs. not, Lwt vs. Async, etc.).

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I agree it's quite annoying to set up an OCaml project, and all the Jane Street stuff makes it even more confusing for newcomers. But to be fair, it may be the case with other languages as well. I recently tried to learn some Javascript, and I spent some time understanding the tooling and package management (npm/yarn, bundling, transpiling, node vs browser, difference between javascript versions).

This seems sort of like comparing the complexities of learning German to a level of fluency with the complexities of learning English, differences between major variant forms of English, with a deep dive into the history of the English Language and its poetics.

Modern JavaScript is a major pain to set up, but the difference with other languages is that for some things it's the only language available.

What's the answer to the confusion around the Jane Street stuff? Do you recommend it for newbies?

Good question. Their libraries are robust and certainly useful if you want to develop real applications. I'm not sure but I'd say no because I think they add an extra level of complexity of a newbie. They are also quite opinionated which some people may dislike.

I talked about "confusion" because I suppose a newbie may quickly be confronted with this question, for intance if they want to follow "Real World OCaml" which is based on Jane Street libraries.

The tooling around OCaml has really improved a lot these last few years (opam, dune, core/async, merlin, ppx...). The downside is that it raises the bar for newcomers.

.NET you install either Visual Studio or just the SDK and everything just works. And it's not just the initial setup. It's the best debugging experience available. It has a robust extension system, though honestly, you don't need to engage it and you're still having an amazing experience.

For a while, I grumbled that it had spoiled me for other languages, the "fun" looking stuff that everyone talks about online. But as with all... rustic... experiences, it's only fun for the weekend. I wouldn't want to spend my entire life chopping wood for fuel, either. Even after spending 3 years fully in JavaScript land, getting very comfortable with all of the tools, it never really got "good enough". Years of effort and my dev experience was still worse than a default VS install. So I went back and have been loving life again.

VS installation is also a PITA if you have your C:\ on an SSD. The installer doesn't give you choice of what partition to install to (for most of its huge disk space demands) so you need to fake it with a bunch of symlinks. The VS team recognizes this problem but doesn't do anything about it, as follows from the comments on https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/content/problem/...

Or just buy a bigger SSD. Makes all kinds of things much nicer.

Difficult when I’m using Bootcamp on a MacBook Pro unfortunately

Well there's your first mistake ;)

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