[Caml-list] OCaml for cloud-native apps

[Caml-list] OCaml for cloud-native apps

[Markus Rudy]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1358 bytes --]

Hi all,

I started writing OCaml recently, coming from a background of Scala and
Python. My interest was triggered by a HackerNews post announcing an
MOOC [1] for a language I never heard of before. As you might
comprehend, I was quickly pulled into this amazing world of global type
inference, multi-paradigm programming and native compilation.

Since my day job is heavily focused on cloud development, I also came
round to write some Go code. You can tell that this language is designed
for containers, but what struck me as odd were the many parallels that I
saw to OCaml - static compilation to native code, object oriented
programming, first-class functions. Made me wonder if OCaml would be a
good fit for running in, say, Kubernetes.

I wrote a simple TCP utility to accompany my mail server, which is
running on k8s, and after having dealt with some quirks I found that the
language and ecosystem fit the cloud-native paradigm quite nicely. It
also motivated me to write some of my findings up [2] and see if I can
come up with some cool use cases.

Are you deploying OCaml in containers? Are you aware of some libraries
and/or tooling to accelerate developing OCaml for the cloud?

Cheers, Markus

[1]: https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02/session02/about
[2]: https://github.com/burgerdev/cloudtools


[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] OCaml for cloud-native apps

[Yawar Amin]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2177 bytes --]

Hi Markus, check out https://mirage.io/

Anil Madhavapeddy's team has been working on the Mirage unikernel for
several years and they were recently acquired by Docker. The value
proposition is being able to compile a kernel and any other stack you need
right inside your server and spin up a new instance in a few milliseconds
as soon as a request comes in. Anil spoke about it in this classic episode
of the FLOSS Weekly podcast: https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/302

Cheers,

Yawar

On Fri, May 18, 2018 at 4:17 PM, Markus Rudy <webmaster@burgerdev.de> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I started writing OCaml recently, coming from a background of Scala and
> Python. My interest was triggered by a HackerNews post announcing an
> MOOC [1] for a language I never heard of before. As you might
> comprehend, I was quickly pulled into this amazing world of global type
> inference, multi-paradigm programming and native compilation.
>
> Since my day job is heavily focused on cloud development, I also came
> round to write some Go code. You can tell that this language is designed
> for containers, but what struck me as odd were the many parallels that I
> saw to OCaml - static compilation to native code, object oriented
> programming, first-class functions. Made me wonder if OCaml would be a
> good fit for running in, say, Kubernetes.
>
> I wrote a simple TCP utility to accompany my mail server, which is
> running on k8s, and after having dealt with some quirks I found that the
> language and ecosystem fit the cloud-native paradigm quite nicely. It
> also motivated me to write some of my findings up [2] and see if I can
> come up with some cool use cases.
>
> Are you deploying OCaml in containers? Are you aware of some libraries
> and/or tooling to accelerate developing OCaml for the cloud?
>
> Cheers, Markus
>
> [1]: https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02/session02/about
> [2]: https://github.com/burgerdev/cloudtools
>
>

-- 
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

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2718 bytes --]

Re: [Caml-list] OCaml for cloud-native apps

[Gerd Stolpmann]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2908 bytes --]

Dear Markus,

I am not sure that I understand what you are referring to. Kubernetes
(and the underlying Docker) is just a method for distributing code to
Linux. As OCaml compiles natively to Linux, it is a perfect fit from
that perspective.

For sure you can write servers in OCaml (though in direct comparison
with Go it only shines when you really can exploit its language features
- there are downsides like missing multicore capability - for that
reason we are currently developing a server in Go where some (complex)
functionality is handed off to OCaml and linked via FFI). Whether there
is some special language feature primarily useful in cloud environments?
I don't know, I guess this depends heavily on the application area.

Gerd


On 19.05.18 12:39, Markus Rudy wrote:
> Dear list,
>
> sorry for the repost, it turns out that I needed to relax my dmarc
> settings [a] for this list to work properly. Please find the original
> message below.
>
> Cheers, Markus
>
> [a]
> https://dmarc.org/wiki/FAQ#I_operate_a_mailing_list_and_I_want_to_interoperate_with_DMARC.2C_what_should_I_do.3F
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I started writing OCaml recently, coming from a background of Scala and
> Python. My interest was triggered by a HackerNews post announcing an
> MOOC [1] for a language I never heard of before. As you might
> comprehend, I was quickly pulled into this amazing world of global type
> inference, multi-paradigm programming and native compilation.
>
> Since my day job is heavily focused on cloud development, I also came
> round to write some Go code. You can tell that this language is designed
> for containers, but what struck me as odd were the many parallels that I
> saw to OCaml - static compilation to native code, object oriented
> programming, first-class functions. Made me wonder if OCaml would be a
> good fit for running in, say, Kubernetes.
>
> I wrote a simple TCP utility to accompany my mail server, which is
> running on k8s, and after having dealt with some quirks I found that the
> language and ecosystem fit the cloud-native paradigm quite nicely. It
> also motivated me to write some of my findings up [2] and see if I can
> come up with some cool use cases.
>
> Are you deploying OCaml in containers? Are you aware of some libraries
> and/or tooling to accelerate developing OCaml for the cloud?
>
> Cheers, Markus
>
> [1]: https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02/session02/about
> [2]: https://github.com/burgerdev/cloudtools
>
>
>

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------
Gerd Stolpmann, Darmstadt, Germany    gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de
My OCaml site:          http://www.camlcity.org
Contact details:        http://www.camlcity.org/contact.html
Company homepage:       http://www.gerd-stolpmann.de
------------------------------------------------------------



[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --]

[Caml-list] OCaml for cloud-native apps

[Markus Rudy]

[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1674 bytes --]

Dear list,

sorry for the repost, it turns out that I needed to relax my dmarc
settings [a] for this list to work properly. Please find the original
message below.

Cheers, Markus

[a]
https://dmarc.org/wiki/FAQ#I_operate_a_mailing_list_and_I_want_to_interoperate_with_DMARC.2C_what_should_I_do.3F


Hi all,

I started writing OCaml recently, coming from a background of Scala and
Python. My interest was triggered by a HackerNews post announcing an
MOOC [1] for a language I never heard of before. As you might
comprehend, I was quickly pulled into this amazing world of global type
inference, multi-paradigm programming and native compilation.

Since my day job is heavily focused on cloud development, I also came
round to write some Go code. You can tell that this language is designed
for containers, but what struck me as odd were the many parallels that I
saw to OCaml - static compilation to native code, object oriented
programming, first-class functions. Made me wonder if OCaml would be a
good fit for running in, say, Kubernetes.

I wrote a simple TCP utility to accompany my mail server, which is
running on k8s, and after having dealt with some quirks I found that the
language and ecosystem fit the cloud-native paradigm quite nicely. It
also motivated me to write some of my findings up [2] and see if I can
come up with some cool use cases.

Are you deploying OCaml in containers? Are you aware of some libraries
and/or tooling to accelerate developing OCaml for the cloud?

Cheers, Markus

[1]: https://www.fun-mooc.fr/courses/parisdiderot/56002S02/session02/about
[2]: https://github.com/burgerdev/cloudtools




[-- Attachment #2: OpenPGP digital signature --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 488 bytes --]