Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998)
Report a link problem
Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderFor web developers who are looking for an industrial strength functional language instead of JS, OCaml probably has the best story here. Actually it has two OCaml->JS compilers of very high quality The first one, js_of_ocaml, could bootstrap the whole compiler several years ago(probably the first one there). The recent one, https://github.com/bloomberg/bucklescript, push the JS compilation into next level, it generates fairly readable code, good FFI story, and its compilation is extremely fast, check out the…
Every time I see ML on HN I hope it's about ML the language and I'm sad when it turns out to be Machine Learning instead, haha. It's a shame ML-family of languages isn't very popular. 1ML for instance could be a fantastic modern language but I don't see that happening.
Because you can do stuff like: type tree = Empty | Leaf of int | Node of tree * tree
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 450
- Total comments
- 256
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-09-16 | Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers | groovy2shoes | 64 | 30 |
| 2015-10-20 | Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998) | eatonphil | 2 | 0 |
| 2015-12-10 | Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998)First breakout | jasim | 140 | 79 |
| 2017-04-15 | Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998)Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | monssoen | 241 | 147 |
| 2019-12-14 | Why SML and OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998) | chmaynard | 2 | 0 |
| 2022-01-08 | Why ML/OCaml are good for writing compilers (1998) | keewee7 | 1 | 0 |