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Learn OCaml

(ocaml-sf.org)
203 points smartmic | 1 comments | 27 Jun 25 20:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.33s | source
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another_twist ◴[28 Jun 25 05:13 UTC] No.44402433[source]▶
Is OCaml still worth learning these days ? Feels like plenty of languages are evolving quite well and most things can be done in imperative langs like Go/Java with pretty concise code and certainly better perf.
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1. IshKebab ◴[28 Jun 25 14:55 UTC] No.44405117[source]▶
I would say no. Anything you can do in OCaml you could just as well do in Rust and Rust has many many advantages over OCaml. Vastly bigger ecosystem, Windows support that isn't an afterthought, much better documentation, the syntax is quite a lot friendlier, etc.

Really the only reason I can think to use OCaml over Rust is the compile time, which is quite impressive and significantly better than Rust's. But I don't think that's enough to put up with the other downsides.

I don't think the borrow checker is a factor. OCaml has aspects that are equally painful to learn.

Also if you know Rust you won't really learn much by learning OCaml except "oh that's where that Rust feature came from". Rust stole all the good features from OCaml.