book VS ocaml-containers

Some of your questions might be answered in this book (free online version): https://dev.realworldocaml.org/

I don't think they're wrong

the Jane Street side are quite prolific with blog posts etc

as a newcomer to OCaml one of the first, and nicer-looking, intro resources you'll likely encounter is the Real World OCaml book https://dev.realworldocaml.org/ which unfortunately does everything using Base instead of the stdlib

Personally that didn't sit right to me and I prefer to use the stdlib by default (which seems fine and not in need of a wholesale replacement)

This is an oldie but a goodie.

OCaml has, unlike Standard ML, grown quite a lot since this page was made.

In particular, the section "Standard libraries", I'd recommend looking at:

https://dev.realworldocaml.org/

A couple of places where the comparison is outdated:

- OCaml using Base [1] allows for result-type oriented programming

- OCaml using Base uses less language magic and more module system

While there was and is truth to the distinction that SML is for scientists and OCaml is for engineers, this dichotomy is getting dated: OCaml is under active development, which means that scientists who want better tooling will choose OCaml. For example, 1ML [2] by Andreas Rossberg was built in OCaml.

[1]: https://opensource.janestreet.com/base/

Real World OCaml (version 2 is finally out) is also pretty good.

Real World OCaml is also a good resource, geared more towards people who already have some programming experience and want a more industry/practical focused learning experience.

ocaml.org’s new website is packed with lots of great early intros.

most learners eventually gravitate towards Real World OCaml https://dev.realworldocaml.org/ for additional learning.

Unfortunately, the learning resources for different domains out there isn’t as highly curated or prolific as, say, rust. If you do web dev like me, it takes a bit more work to find the tools and put them together. But the language itself lends itself well to systems level programming.

Fortunately, the forum is a great help.

In general, better read the second edition which is updated to use current Core versions. A print version was published recently.

I recommend https://dev.realworldocaml.org/ and https://cs3110.github.io/textbook/cover.html

Elm is not dead. It just prefers a slow release schedule but is still actively worked on in the background.

That said, you might want to check out OCaml for general purpose programming. Super fast compiler, great performance, can target both native and JS.

It is easier to use than Haskell due to defaulting to eager evaluation (like most languages) strategy instead of laziness and being generally more pragmatic, offering more escape hatches into the imperative world if need be. Plus great upward trajectory with lot's of cool stuff like an effects system and multi-core support coming.

Real World Ocaml is a decent resource: https://dev.realworldocaml.org/

YMMV. Există extensii: Base, Containers. Pentru I/O ai Lwt sau Async.

It focuses on Jane Street's alternate standard library, Base, which means you're not quite learning OCaml, you're learning a distorted dialect of it that is mostly the same but with a lot of unique, opinionated design decisions chosen by Jane Street developers to suit their company's workflow. If you want to use Base you pretty much have to opt in to its way of doing things and pulling in a lot of extra code, so I think it's better to learn OCaml first, then learn Jane Street's way, especially since OCaml's stdlib has grown and improved a good bit since the time when Base was made and RWO originally written. Plus there's also containers now, which is a stdlib extension that lets you cherry-pick the things you want in a more self-contained way that builds on what OCaml provides instead of trying to replace it.

Fortunately, there is Containers which gets the argument ordering right.

Instead of either, you might be interested in Containers. It's more like an extension of the OCaml stdlib where you can cherry-pick what you want to use instead of having to go all-or-nothing. Adds a lot of useful things but not in the opinionated "let's make OCaml a different language" way that Base does.

Same can be said of containers, which extends the stdlib rather than replaces or changes it. It's not fragmentation, it's a "batteries included" utility library that works with the stdlib.

I'm not a fan of some of the opinionated things it does and find it bloats the executables a bit much for my liking, but it is coherent and nicely made. I was looking into trying Batteries instead but someone suggested containers and it seems more modular and an extension of the stdlib rather than a replacement, which is more to my liking.

For writing a self-contained library, people generally stick to stdlib (and occasionally some lightweight stdlib alternatives, e.g. containers - https://github.com/c-cube/ocaml-containers). Personally, I use containers a fair bit for libraries, but not as a full stdlib replacement.