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--94eb2c07ab4865860a0537343b8c Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dean Thompson wrote: > But there=E2=80=99s at least one con: Discourse is not nearly as well est= ablished > or widely known as some other alternatives, so might be less appealing to > casual participants. > Yeah, mailing-lists and IRC channels are rather more established. I hear very bad things about Slack for large communities -- it seems to be intended for tight-knit teams inside a single organization: https://medium.freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regret= ted-it-391bcc714c81#.2ow2y1lcb https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3D9754626 It's pretty clear that Slack is not, and never will be, built for this > use-case. Slack is for *teams*: small groups where everyone knows > one-another by name, can be trusted with one-another's email-addresses and > other contact information, can be trusted to only use @everyone triggers > for important things, etc. A lot of Slack's features are built to assume > this "small group with a shared purpose where everyone can be trusted to > fiddle with things" paradigm. The only feedback I could get from gitter.im is "it spams my mailbox constantly", not exactly high praise. I'm sure it's a good tools for people, but the fact that it is a proprietary tool built by a for-profit company is giving me pause. In general I support the idea of "meeting the users where they are" even when that mean displeasing technological choices; this is why I have been active answering OCaml questions on StackOverflow in the past. I would be interested in making experiments with either: - Discourse: I also heard bad things about it, but it's shiny, reactive and open source - Mattermost, as an open-source alternative to Slack -- but we would need to find someone willing to host an instance. On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 9:46 AM, Ashish Agarwal wrote: > 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 =C3=A9crit : >> > >> > >> > 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/ocam= l. >> 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 rath= er >> > 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 connecte= d. >> > 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 y= ou >> >> 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 issue= s. >> >> >> >> 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 =E2= =82=AC30 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=E2= =80=99s >> >>> systematic effort to streamline broader uptake of OCaml. >> >>> >> >>> These are the impressions of a newcomer. If there is interest, I wou= ld >> >>> 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 >> > > --94eb2c07ab4865860a0537343b8c Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Dean Thompson wrote:
But there=E2=80=99s at least one con: Disco= urse is not=20 nearly as well established or widely known as some other alternatives,=20 so might be less appealing to casual participants.
<= br>
Yeah, mailing-lists and IRC channels are rather more establis= hed.

I hear very bad things about Slack for large communi= ties -- it seems to be intended for tight-knit teams inside a single organi= zation:
=C2=A0 https://medium= .freecodecamp.com/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-and-we-deeply-regretted-it-391bcc7= 14c81#.2ow2y1lcb
=C2=A0 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3D9754626

It's pretty clear that Slack is not,= and never will be, built for this use-case. Slack is for teams: small groups where everyone knows one-another by name, can be trusted=20 with one-another's email-addresses and other contact information, can be trusted to only use @everyone triggers for important things, etc. A lot of Slack's features are built to assume this "small group with a = shared purpose where everyone can be trusted to fiddle with things" paradigm= .

The only f= eedback I could get from gitter.im is &quo= t;it spams my mailbox constantly", not exactly high praise. I'm su= re it's a good tools for people, but the fact that it is a proprietary = tool built by a for-profit company is giving me pause.

In general I s= upport the idea of "meeting the users where they are" even when t= hat mean displeasing technological choices; this is why I have been active = answering OCaml questions on StackOverflow in the past. I would be interest= ed in making experiments with either:

- Discourse: I also heard bad t= hings about it, but it's shiny, reactive and open source

- Matter= most, as an open-source alternative to Slack -- but we would need to find s= omeone willing to host an instance.


On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 9:46= AM, Ashish Agarwal <agarwal1975@gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 1:02 PM, Y= otam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com> wrote:
<= div class=3D"gmail_quote">
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 oc= aml/oasis and ocaml/opam. So something already works.



On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 12:54 PM, Mohamed Iguernlala
<iguer.auto@gm= ail.com> 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, p= lease 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 =C3=A9crit :
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:40 AM, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com&= gt;
> wrote:
>>
>> Adoption is interesting but, as Tony Hoare put it, we are not fash= ion
>> designers. The best thing I can think of is to communicate more an= d better,
>> talk about the cool world that is being done in the OCaml communit= ies, and
>> importantly talking about it outside it. Supporting software proje= cts that
>> have a potential for impact outside the OCaml community is also ke= y -- 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/ocam= l. As
> a reddit user, I would rank /r/ocaml as "barely alive but stable&= quot;--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 substa= ntial
> and popular OCaml groups there. There was an OCaml aggregation list, b= ut 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 onl= y 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 o= n 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 sign= als
> "old tech community" to me. Slack or gitter.im is a more inclusiv= e, modern
> community. In order to participate in IRC, one must always be connecte= d.
> This makes it more difficult for outsiders to come in and feel like th= ey can
> 'catch up' on the conversation (Yes, I know there are chat log= s, but this
> feature is not an integrated part of IRC).
>
> In summary, all of the signals that I usually depend on to evaluate th= e
> community around a technology are either weak or give me the impressio= n of
> "old and barely stable". New, exciting technologies that I&#= 39;ve seen tend to
> embrace and tap in to existing community platforms (slack, reddit, git= hub,
> 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&= gt;
> wrote:
>>
>> > Do others on this list feel the ramp to OCaml adoption is smo= other than
>> > my impression suggests?
>>
>> I can't speak for "adoption", but I think that you h= ave been very kind as
>> far as user experience is concerned, that it is probably worse tha= n you
>> suggest.
>>
>> We discussed some of these issues a few month ago in a thread laun= ched by
>> Hendrik Bloom:
>>
>>=C2=A0 =C2=A0Is OCaml for experienced beginners?
>>=C2=A0 =C2=A0Hendrik Bloom, December 2015
>>=C2=A0 =C2=A0https://sympa.i= nria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-12/msg00077.html
>>
>> I gave a few remarks on the evolution of the OCaml ecosystem on th= e period
>> I know of that you may be interested in:
>>=C2=A0 =C2=A0https://sympa.i= nria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/2015-12/msg00110.html
>>
>> I think "adoption" and "usability" are interli= nked but separate issues.
>>
>> Getting adoption distributes the number of people interesting in h= elping
>> on usability, so it tends to improve usability, but I tend to thin= k 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 fash= ion
>> designers. The best thing I can think of is to communicate more an= d better,
>> talk about the cool world that is being done in the OCaml communit= ies, and
>> importantly talking about it outside it. Supporting software proje= cts that
>> have a potential for impact outside the OCaml community is also ke= y -- 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 te= ll them
>> about the OCaml compiler tools (ocamlc, ocamlopt), ocamlfind, a bu= ild system
>> (omake or ocamlbuild for example), oasis, Merlin, opam, and get th= em 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 -- fo= r 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 newcome= rs? Where
>>> is the main ongoing work on this? Who are the main leaders fro= m this
>>> perspective?
>>
>>
>> This is an interesting question. To my knowledge, no one is specif= ically
>> focused on this mightily important question. But it's fair to = assume that we
>> have no "usability team" today, it's more a distribu= ted collection of
>> efforts going in all directions from various people, for example:<= br> >>
>> - Gerd Stolpmann did a lot of work on the early language tooling, = notably
>> GODI (an earlier ocaml-specific package manager) and ocamlfind, an= d also
>> kept very high documentation standards that are an example to foll= ow.
>>
>> - Sylvain le Gall's work on OASIS helps a lot of developers do= their
>> packaging by encapsulating, in particular, the knowledge of what t= o install
>> where (not a simple question).
>>
>> - The OPAM team as a whole, as well as the maintainers of the publ= ic opam
>> repository, have done tremendous work making OCaml software easy t= o install
>> and deploy. (Windows is still of a sore point, but there is progre= ss in that
>> area. It's a distinct possibility that the OCaml ecosystem wil= l become nice
>> to use on Windows before Windows disappears or gets a real Unix us= erland.)
>>
>> I would personally be interested in helping someone with a holisti= c
>> 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 no= thing very
>> certain; from a crowd-funding perspective I would be glad to pay = =E2=82=AC30 a month
>> to fund such a position.) I think this is a difficult position bec= ause there
>> is a lot of thankless grunt work implied, and arguably it's no= t a very
>> career-advancing move.
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 8:57 AM, Dean Thompson <deansherthompson@gmail.com<= /a>>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Thank you, everyone, for the responses and discussion. If ther= e is
>>> interest, I would still love to hear more thoughts about wheth= er 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 W= orld OCaml, to
>>> the OCaml Users and Developers Workshop. Technical progress is= rapid. But so
>>> far, to me, these wonderful contributions feel more like givin= g back to the
>>> community for us to make what we can of them, rather than anyo= ne=E2=80=99s
>>> 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.=C2=A0 Subscription management and arch= ives:
>>> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
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>>
>
>

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