Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video]

Re:Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video] by andrewnc on Wednesday March 25, 2020 @09:13PM (#22690008)

This is a really fascinating question. When I chatted with some of the Jane Street crew at NeurIPS they were adamant in the benefits of OCaml's Hindley-Milner type system.

I didn't ask, but am curious, how that compares to the type guarantees of Rust? Would moving to Rust cause them to lose that advantage of compile time error catching? I've never written a line of Rust (hopefully that changes soon) so I don't know, but am certainly interested.

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Re:Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video] by throwaway720348 on Thursday March 26, 2020 @05:27AM (#22691828)

Rust type's system has a similar power level to OCaml's but without modules (which are used heavily at JS) and with linear types/lifetimes. Rust would probably be a good fit for JS, but of course it takes a lot to overcome the momentum of 20 years of using primarily one language.

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Re:Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video] by smabie on Wednesday March 25, 2020 @10:23PM (#22690321)

Ocaml doesn't have a HM type system. I mean I guess it does, but Ocaml supports a lot of stuff HM doesn't.

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Re:Jane Street and the OCaml Compiler (2018) [video] by mijoharas on Wednesday March 25, 2020 @11:34PM (#22690604)

Technically the same is true of Haskell[0] but most people (myself included) will refer to the kind of type system used as Hindley-Milner for simplicities sake. (Both are more powerful though)

[0] https://cstheory.stackexchange.com/a/30528/20014

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