Tarides engineer Zach Shipko answers a few questions about why he decided to learn OCaml and why he's particularly excited about the OCaml 5 release. In celebration of OCaml 5, we've interviewed several engineers about their personal experience with the language and what features they enjoy. It's a great way to get some unique insight into the language from someone who works with it on a daily basis. Christine: Why did you decide to become an OCaml programmer rather than Python or C++? Zach: I don't really see myself as an "OCaml programmer" because I use Python, C, Rust, Javascript, and other ..read more

In celebration of the OCaml 5 release, we decided to interview a few of our talented engineers about OCaml. While it isn't a well-known language outside of the functional programming community, we're striving to get the word out about the great benefits of OCaml and why it's worth your time to try it out, especially with the introduction of Multicore support in OCaml 5. KC Sivaramakrishnan's inspiring keynote address is a great introduction to OCaml 5 and all it offers. Check out the speaker deck as well. Today our engineer Jules Aguillon, who works primarily on our OCaml Platform tooling proj ..read more

We’ve come to expect a lot from the programming languages we use. We want the memory safety of Java, the performance of C/C++, and the concurrency of Go. On top of this, we need robust cybersecurity tools to protect us from the many risks and vulnerabilities in the world, all in an intuitive and easy-to-use package for programmers. You can expect all of the above with OCaml 5. The new library Eio introduces some great new features that let the programmer write concurrent code in a way that best suits them. Eio is fast, solves the function colouring problem, and can use effect handlers to let t ..read more

The new version of OCaml 5 is here! It brings the ability to program multicore applications and to maximise our usage of all the CPU cores without a global lock getting in the way of performance. What's most exciting to me though is that we have a whole new way of writing... bugs! And with so much potential for mistakes comes a new era of testing tools to help us write correct applications: Memory Model The first of those is the memory model of OCaml 5. If you already know what those two words mean, please skip this part because I won't pretend that I do. (I'm still convinced that it's just so ..read more

Merlin is one of the most important tools for OCaml users, but a lot of its advanced feature often remain unknown. For OCaml newcomers who might not know, Merlin is the server software that provides intelligence to code editors when working on OCaml documents. It allows one to easily navigate the code, get meaningful information (like type information), and perform code generation and refactoring tasks. Merlin installation and usage is documented on its official webpage. Merlin is distributed with both an Emacs and a Vim plugin. It can also be used in Vscode via the OCaml LSP Server and the co ..read more

The technology that makes blockchain possible is complex, cutting-edge, and fascinating. Balancing efficiency and security on a knife's edge, it finds perfect harmony between high transaction speeds and safe, predictable results. Blockchain technology is constantly evolving, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and driving innovation and research. Discover how Tarides helped Nomadic Labs use OCaml 5 to boost blockchain performance with rollup technology. In order to remain competitive with other major players in the blockchain market (including Bitcoin and Ethereum), the open-source bloc ..read more

It's here! It's finally here! On Friday, 16 December 2022, the OCaml community announced the official release of Multicore OCaml! From the beginning, Tarides has been deeply involved in OCaml's evolution, so we're very proud to present OCaml 5! Our work with the myriad of academics, industrial developers, and the entire OCaml community has been both inspiring and fulfilling. We look forward to continuing our collaboration for future iterations of OCaml. Watch KC's keynote to get a visual overview of all OCaml 5 has to offer! About OCaml 5 OCaml is a pragmatic functional programming language. I ..read more

In 2022 a consortium of companies ran an international competition, called the ZPrize, to advance the state of the art in “zero-knowledge” cryptography. We decided to have a go in our free time at submitting solutions to both the Multi-Scalar Multiplication (MSM) and Number Theoretic Transform (NTT) tracks, using the same open source Hardcaml libraries that Jane Street uses for our own FPGA development. We believe by using Hardcaml we were able to more efficiently and robustly come up with designs in the short competition period. These designs also interact with the standard vendor RTL flow an ..read more

We're in the home stretch for the full OCaml 5 release. Multicore is almost here! Yesterday its Release Candidate (RC) was announced on the OCaml Discuss, which is the final step before the major release, expected before Christmas. To learn more about the exciting features coming with OCaml 5, you can watch KC’s keynote address and check out his speaker slide deck as well. As always, feel free to contact us for more information about using OCaml and for support on your OCaml projects. The OCaml community has worked tirelessly to release 5.0 before the end of the year, with a lot of time spent ..read more

Just about a month after the OCaml 5 Beta release, the OCaml 5 Beta2 version has been released, taking us one step closer to the full OCaml 5 with Multicore release later this year. The OCaml community's collaboration is coming to fruition! Although we're not quite ready for the RC1 (Release Candidate) version, several things have been added and improved with Beta2. To learn more about the exciting things coming with OCaml 5, please watch KC Sivaramakrishnan’s keynote address and check out his speaker slide deck as well. As always, feel free to contact us for more information about using OCaml ..read more