Re:Why OCaml
by yawaramin on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:57PM
(#25895248)
A lot of this talk was more 'What is OCaml' than 'Why OCaml', but here are the parts where he talked about the 'Why':
- Jane Street is in a business where, because of the sheer volume, even the tail ends of normally distributed events happen with surprising frequency, so they don't feel confident deploying with just tests--they need the universal assurance that a typechecker gives
- The transactions they are involved in can be adversarial--someone actively working against their profit motive--so they need extra assurances about their code
- They got to hire some incredibly talented people who would otherwise have never considered Jane Street but for the choice of OCaml
- Jane Street is in a business where, because of the sheer volume, even the tail ends of normally distributed events happen with surprising frequency, so they don't feel confident deploying with just tests--they need the universal assurance that a typechecker gives
- The transactions they are involved in can be adversarial--someone actively working against their profit motive--so they need extra assurances about their code
- They got to hire some incredibly talented people who would otherwise have never considered Jane Street but for the choice of OCaml