Hi there, I guess you found inria.fr and not infria.fr :-). If it's the case, the first thing you should notice when visiting it is the message: "This site is updated infrequently. For up-to-date information, please visit the new OCaml website at ocaml.org ." and on ocaml.org, you'll find a "modern website" with a "more conventional" extension. One click later (on the Community item of the upper menu), you'll get the information you need about mailing lists. Regards, - Mohamed. Le 08/07/2016 17:16, Duane Johnson a écrit : > > On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Gabriel Scherer > > wrote: > > Adoption is interesting but, as Tony Hoare put it, we are not > fashion designers. The best thing I can think of is to communicate > more and better, talk about the cool world that is being done in > the OCaml communities, and importantly talking about it outside > it. Supporting software projects that have a potential for impact > outside the OCaml community is also key -- Coq, MLdonkey, > Coccinelle, Flow, the SLAM static verifier toolkit, just to name a > few. > > > > As someone who just signed up to this mailing list, may I offer some > observations? > > - my first impression of OCaml community was through > reddit.com/r/ocaml . As a reddit user, I > would rank /r/ocaml as "barely alive but stable"--in other words, the > upvotes-per-thread there are in the single digits and low > double-digits showing people exist there, but it is not a thriving > community. > - next, I tried to find a google group. It was hard to find any > substantial and popular OCaml groups there. There was an OCaml > aggregation list, but it wasn't clear that it was a discussion group. > My first thought was, Is there no mailing list? I searched around and > found the infria.fr domain. To an outsider, this > lends no credibility or brand-name familiarity. Not only is the web > domain unfamiliar, but the website does not look welcoming--it appears > to be out of the 90s. > - signing up for a mailing list is slow and unrewarding. I'd much > rather sign up for a more modern community technology like reddit, > facebook, slack, or google groups. > - I clicked "Info" to get more info about the mailing list on > infria.fr and it says "Private information" inside > a white bubble. Ok... > - I looked for a chat community, and IRC is the only option. This > signals "old tech community" to me. Slack or gitter.im > is a more inclusive, modern community. In order to > participate in IRC, one must always be connected. This makes it more > difficult for outsiders to come in and feel like they can 'catch up' > on the conversation (Yes, I know there are chat logs, but this feature > is not an integrated part of IRC). > > In summary, all of the signals that I usually depend on to evaluate > the community around a technology are either weak or give me the > impression of "old and barely stable". New, exciting technologies that > I've seen tend to embrace and tap in to existing community platforms > (slack, reddit, github, gitbook, google groups) in order to leverage > the platform and amplify their advertising signal. > > Duane Johnson > > > On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Gabriel Scherer > > wrote: > > > Do others on this list feel the ramp to OCaml adoption is > smoother than my impression suggests? > > I can't speak for "adoption", but I think that you have been very > kind as far as user experience is concerned, that it is probably > worse than you suggest. > > We discussed some of these issues a few month ago in a thread > launched by Hendrik Bloom: > > Is OCaml for experienced beginners? > Hendrik Bloom, December 2015 > https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-12/msg00077.html > > I gave a few remarks on the evolution of the OCaml ecosystem on > the period I know of that you may be interested in: > https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-12/msg00110.html > > I think "adoption" and "usability" are interlinked but separate > issues. > > Getting adoption distributes the number of people interesting in > helping on usability, so it tends to improve usability, but I tend > to think that the second is actually the more interesting, > important goal to aim at. > > Adoption is interesting but, as Tony Hoare put it, we are not > fashion designers. The best thing I can think of is to communicate > more and better, talk about the cool world that is being done in > the OCaml communities, and importantly talking about it outside > it. Supporting software projects that have a potential for impact > outside the OCaml community is also key -- Coq, MLdonkey, > Coccinelle, Flow, the SLAM static verifier toolkit, just to name a > few. > > Regarding usability, I think the tooling ecosystem is too complex > today. If I wanted to bootstrap a beginner to do stuff I would > have to tell them about the OCaml compiler tools (ocamlc, > ocamlopt), ocamlfind, a build system (omake or ocamlbuild for > example), oasis, Merlin, opam, and get them to learn either Vim or > Emacs. That's a bit too much and even with the plethora of tools > there are problems we haven't really solved yet -- for example, > how to avoid module name conflicts. > I think a lot more work is required, both incremental improvements > and a few grand redesigns, before we reach a comfortable ecosystem > where starting an OCaml project feels like a breeze. That's what I > would aim at. > > Who here is excited about making OCaml approachable to > newcomers? Where is the main ongoing work on this? Who are the > main leaders from this perspective? > > > This is an interesting question. To my knowledge, no one is > specifically focused on this mightily important question. But it's > fair to assume that we have no "usability team" today, it's more a > distributed collection of efforts going in all directions from > various people, for example: > > - Gerd Stolpmann did a lot of work on the early language tooling, > notably GODI (an earlier ocaml-specific package manager) and > ocamlfind, and also kept very high documentation standards that > are an example to follow. > > - Sylvain le Gall's work on OASIS helps a lot of developers do > their packaging by encapsulating, in particular, the knowledge of > what to install where (not a simple question). > > - The OPAM team as a whole, as well as the maintainers of the > public opam repository, have done tremendous work making OCaml > software easy to install and deploy. (Windows is still of a sore > point, but there is progress in that area. It's a distinct > possibility that the OCaml ecosystem will become nice to use on > Windows before Windows disappears or gets a real Unix userland.) > > I would personally be interested in helping someone with a > holistic approach to usability devote as much of their time as > they can. (I think there are some sources of funding that could be > considered, but nothing very certain; from a crowd-funding > perspective I would be glad to pay €30 a month to fund such a > position.) I think this is a difficult position because there is a > lot of thankless grunt work implied, and arguably it's not a very > career-advancing move. > > On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:57 AM, Dean Thompson > > > wrote: > > Thank you, everyone, for the responses and discussion. If > there is interest, I would still love to hear more thoughts > about whether there is a roadmap (either de facto from the > community, or explicit from leaders of the community) to > foster broader adoption. > > I see that many organizations are making immense contributions > to the community: from language and ecosystem enhancements, to > Real World OCaml, to the OCaml Users and Developers Workshop. > Technical progress is rapid. But so far, to me, these > wonderful contributions feel more like giving back to the > community for us to make what we can of them, rather than > anyone’s systematic effort to streamline broader uptake of OCaml. > > These are the impressions of a newcomer. If there is interest, > I would love to hear more seasoned viewpoints. > > Dean > > > > > > > -- > Caml-list mailing list. Subscription management and archives: > https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list > Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners > Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs > > >