Re: [Caml-list] how to encourage adoption of OCaml?

[Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>]

Gabriel, I surveyed a few of the IRC lurkers. The sense I get from
their reactions is that they wouldn't want to leave IRC (which makes
sense) but would be open to a gitter room that connected to IRC via a
bridge.

This means that to establish the gitter room + bridge we need to:
1. Create the gitter room on the gitter site. This must be done by
someone with OCaml github credentials.
2. Follow the instructions on
https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-gitter using an OCaml
server. The bridge must have access to github credentials as well.
3. Add the new room to the ocaml.org community page. Involves a simple PR.

On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just asked on the neovim gitter, and the service they use to bridge
> with IRC is this one:
> https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-gitter
>
> Every aspiring programmer has a github account at this point. It's
> just reality. Even without one, you get to view gitter chat in
> realtime. IRC requires a bunch of extra arcane knowledge that most
> beginners aren't willing to learn, to a large degree because IRC is
> simply not being used actively anymore.
>
> Listen -- you can always dismiss features, and like I said,
> programmers tend to believe that what they use is the best and
> everything new or different is unnecessary. I get it -- I think like
> that automatically as well. I think we have to look beyond that --
> many of the advantages of new technologies seem minor but they add up.
> People were giving the same kinds of rebuttals to moving to github
> before that move was made (though I don't think the improvement will
> be anywhere near that delta).
>
> Perhaps the key thing to grasp here is this: we're competing with
> other languages and ecosystems for programmers. We need to be as
> attractive as possible. This competitiveness must take into account
> knowledge of the current tools and the impressions they leave on
> users. As soon as there's a hurdle in the way, many potential
> newcomers will be lost. The additional benefits to existing community
> members are there as well, but they're harder to talk about tangibly
> until we experiment with the new communication channels.
>
> On Sun, Jul 10, 2016 at 12:45 PM, Glen Mével <glen.mevel@crans.org> wrote:
>> Yotam Barnoy a écrit (le 10/07/2016 à 16:47) :
>>
>>> […] I've found gitter to be ideal for this, much more so than IRC
>>> (which has a high barrier-of-entry).
>>
>> what is so complicated about using the web interface to IRC [1] ?
>>
>> what about the barrier‐of‐entry to that gitter? i’ve never heard of it
>> before and i’m not sure what’s so new there (apart from the built‐in
>> persistence), but as i understood, it is a github service so it would
>> require a github account (and to accept to be publicly linked to that
>> github account, and to rely on proprietary solutions, etc·), whereas IRC
>> requires nothing.
>>
>>> I'll enquire on IRC (just connecting requires me using an annoying
>>> service like IRCCloud, which shows the problem -- I can't even post
>>> the question and get a notification about a response.)
>>
>> at least the web interface mentionned above does notify you, and even
>> plays a sound iirc. if you are not served within the hour and want to
>> stay 24 hours a day to finally see your answer, then structured forums
>> are better fit to your use than messy instant messaging anyway.
>>
>> --
>> Glen Mével
>>
>> [1]: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#ocaml
>>
>> p·s·:
>>
>>> b. there are tools to scrape gitter history in existence, making the
>>> fact that they're proprietary fairly irrelevant.
>>
>> the point about proprietary systems is not a mere matter of retrieving
>> history…
>>