On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Yotam Barnoy wrote: Also, could someone with ocaml github permissions start a gitter.im > page for OCaml? It should be relatively painless. > Can you explain what needs to be done exactly. When I'm logged in, I see nothing at gitter.im/ocaml and when I'm logged out I see links for ocaml/oasis and ocaml/opam. So something already works. On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:54 PM, Mohamed Iguernlala > wrote: > > 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 < > gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> > > 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 < > gabriel.scherer@gmail.com> > > 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 < > deansherthompson@gmail.com> > >> 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 > >> > >> > > > > > > -- > 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 >