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Comment by stewbrew | Hacker News Reader

Is my impression correct that the general interest in OCaml has waned & its development has somewhat stalled? I played with OCaml when it was at version 3. I remember the mailing list to be rather vibrant. Now there seem to be fewer posts. I think this is a pity because I really would like to see OCaml to take off. Projects like ocamljava and js_of_ocaml also sound quite promising.

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That impression is incorrect. I don't think the core devs and the overall community have ever been as vibrant as they are now.

Take for instance compiler development: half a decade ago, updates were rare and marginal. Nowadays you can expect a new compiler version every single year with lots of exciting features.

I don't think you've looked very closely (if at all?). There is tons of stuff happening in the OCaml ecosystem. Compiler improvements, large scale projects, more industrial uses and also new books. Try looking at http://OCaml.org for some links (and the planet newsfeed), as well as the websites of OCaml Labs (see the article) or OCamlPro.

He s right for the mailing list though. I regret there is not more discussion happening there

Why? Frankly, I'm glad that there is more stuff happening out on the net at large rather than trapped on one list. I consider it a sign of success (there are probably many more users out there than who are on the mailing list anyway). I've used Python, Ruby, etc but I haven't ever joined their main lists and I don't feel I'm missing out (anything important will spread in other ways).

As a beginner, it is interesting to read more advanced questions and their answers. I learned a lot of ruby that way at the time, and i miss it for 0caml now.

This does still happen (e.g [1]), though I've no idea if the frequency of such posts has changed. If no-one asks questions, then there's nothing to answer (so please do ask!). On the other hand, I've noticed that more people have started to ask/answer questions on StackOverflow [2] so perhaps this just represents the general shift that other langs have already been through.

[1] https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2014-05/msg00146....

[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ocaml

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