I wanted to build all my new projects in OCaml. It’d be a welcomed change from the world of Typescript and Python.
I’ve been a novice hanging around the OCaml community for the past few years. The discussions around algebraic effects and promising language features appeal to me. I eagerly daydream that this is the language and ecosystem I can set myself to mastering for sheer fun! Sure, there’ll be some pain, but I can overcome it!
I never reached the promiseland.
I build for the web. I don’t write compilers, or interface with low-level linux sys calls. The requirements for a mature web stack is just tremendous. You need the ssl stack, the database stack, the http stack, the html stack, and so much more. There are heroes attempting to make OCaml For The Web a reality but unless you’re Jane Street, Ahrefs, or any of the OCaml consultancy groups, it’s just a slow grindfest to solo build a database-based web application compared to the JS/Python/.NET/JVM world. Well duh! Fortunately Chatgpt-4 has helped me overcome many an issues, like writing a Caqti query to select, insert, update my postgres database.
Check out the Caqti code below that executes a vector search with Postgres’spg_embedding, and returns a list of tuples of results. It’s not really the simplest code, although it’s very type-safe. An extension ppx_rapper exists to make writing caqti code easier, but when you compare it to Typescript’s Prisma or Drizzle, .NET’s EntityFramework or Dapper, or Python’s sqlalchemy, life is harder.
open Caqti_request.Infix
open Caqti_type.Std
open Core
let similar_bookmarks ~db:(module Db : Caqti_lwt.CONNECTION) ~(embeddings : string list) =
let stringified_embeddings = embeddings |> String.concat ~sep:"," in
let embedding_sql_arg = "{" ^ stringified_embeddings ^ "}" in
let open Caqti_type in
let web_bookmark_typ =
let encode w = Ok (w.id, w.title, w.url) in
let decode (id, title, url) = Ok { id; title; url } in
custom ~encode ~decode (tup3 int string string)
in
let query =
(Caqti_type.string ->* web_bookmark_typ)
@@ " SELECT * FROM web_bookmark ORDER BY embedding <-> ? LIMIT 5;"
in
Db.collect_list query embedding_sql_arg |> App_error.map_caqti_error
;;I’ll fast forward to make sure I’m not just ranting. I tried to help out by triaging and fixing bits and pieces on the Dream web framework, but with such a small community, enhancements to libraries just take way longer.
So while I love OCaml, Dune, Opam, and its principles so far, I’ll have to set this one aside whenever I want to build websites. What are my other choices? I don’t really know. All I do know is that I still want to pick a fun programming language. Half the fun is the tool. I flip-flop between Rescript, F#, or just plain old Typescript and Python. Or the occasional attempts at Rust. Maybe Haskell with IHP? Or Gleam? Or Elixir when it has gradual types?
I still hope OCaml can be “my thing” later. It has great qualities.