The State of Full-Stack OCaml (with António Monteiro)

Video Description

OCaml has one of the best-loved compilers available, and parts of it are surprisingly pluggable, so it’s not surprising that someone would eventually try to wed OCaml with JavaScript and the web browser. In fact, the ecosystem has gone further, and there are now a bevvy of options for people who want to write OCaml and run it in the browser, or want to write OCaml in the browser, or want to write something that looks like JavaScript but runs OCaml on the backend. Joining me to explore the OCaml-meets-JavaScript world is António Montiero. He’s a key maintainer/contributor for Melange and ReasonML, as well as several other interesting OCaml web projects. We kick off by discussing the benefits of OCaml and how it clicked with him personally, before we dive into how and why the compiler is being adapted and tweaked to take it to a whole new audience of web-hungry developers. – Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DeveloperVoices/join Sponsor Antonio’s Work: https://github.com/sponsors/anmonteiro/ – The OCaml Platform: https://ocaml.org/platform OCaml on Discord: https://discuss.ocaml.org/t/ocaml-discord-server/1884 ReasonML: https://reasonml.github.io/en/ What is Melange? https://melange.re/v4.0.0/what-is-melange.html Melange for React Devs: https://react-book.melange.re/ The Melange Playground: https://melange.re/v4.0.0/playground/ js_of_ocaml: https://github.com/ocsigen/js_of_ocaml FUN OCaml Conference: https://fun-ocaml.com/ Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/ Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins – 0:00 Intro 1:58 Antonio's OCaml Origin Story 4:41 The Core Benefits of OCaml 6:43 Was There A Moment When It Clicked? 9:14 The OCaml Compiler Ecosystem 20:30 What is Melange? 28:16 Does This Make OCaml A Full-Stack Language? 37:05 What Are The Hardest Parts To Write? 40:01 Replicating OCaml's Module System 55:15 Would WASM Be An Easier Compilation Target? 1:00:30 Can You Write React From OCaml? 1:08:11 Building The Melange Playground 1:14:31 Getting Started With Melange 1:19:36 So What's The Next Step For Melange? 1:25:35 Outro