Dear OCaml enthusiasts,
25 years ago, on May 9th 1996, release 1.00 of the Objective Caml language and system was announced:
https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list/1996-05/msg00003.htmlIt was already the consolidation of many years of work, integrating Jérôme Vouillon and Didier Rémy's work on objects and classes within Caml Special Light, itself a combination of my work on modules and native-code compilation with earlier code taken from Caml Light, especially Damien Doligez's GC.
Little did I know that O(bjective) Caml would still be there 25 years later!
A lot happened during this time, including several major evolutions of the language, and, much more importantly, the emergence of a community of users and an ecosystem of tools and libraries. But maybe this was just the beginning for something even bigger? We'll see...
Happy birthday, OCaml!
- Xavier Leroy