reason VS oni2

Hey HN, at Ahrefs we have been working on an online book that hopefully helps React developers get up and running with Melange, an OCaml to JavaScript compiler. You can read more about Melange here: https://melange.re/.

There are still a few chapters that we'd like to add before considering it "complete", but it might be already helpful for some folks out there, that's why we decided to publish it early.

The book uses Reason syntax to implement React components using ReasonReact components. You can read more about both in:

https://reasonml.github.io/

ReScript is "Fast, Simple, Fully Typed JavaScript from the Future". What that means is that ReScript has a lightning fast compiler, an easy to learn JS like syntax, strong static types, with amazing features like pattern matching and variant types. Until 2020 it was called "BuckleScript" and is closely related to ReasonML.

This tracks with how I've seen "normal" languages converge on similar, flawed imitations of better type systems through tools and repurposed syntax. Thank you for confirming.

Do you have any recommendations or warnings regarding general languages which reach in the opposite direction? Reason[1] and F#[2] are both examples: they attach pre-existing ecosystems and compile-for-$PLATFORM tools to OCaml-like typing.

OCaml itself is also intriguing for personal projects. However, I'm worried the "GPL" in its standard library's LGPL license might scare people despite both the linking exception and Jane Street's MIT alternative.

1. https://reasonml.github.io/

ReasonML purely as a syntax layer on top of OCaml is still being updated and released[1]. Incidentally, I'm one of the maintainers of that project too :-)

With this Melange release, we're hoping to somewhat revive ReasonML and channel some folks back to the community from the perspective of a vertically integrated platform that has seen major investment in the past few years.

[1]: https://github.com/reasonml/reason

Why not use https://reasonml.github.io/ instead? Or just use Typescript?

Quieted down, but I depend on projects with worst graphs:

https://github.com/reasonml/reason/graphs/contributors

There is also reasonml for Web development.

It was onivim2. Iirc it was a one-man show, and stopped when funding dried up. I also hoped to see a a lot from it. Maybe the dev took too much work on his plate, with an unproven language with limited libraries?

https://github.com/onivim/oni2

It's unfortunate that oni2 stopped development.

It had the promise of all the benefits of VS Code, but performance of a native app.

https://v2.onivim.io

Yeah, https://github.com/onivim/oni2/issues/3811

Onivim development has stopped, it is now abandonware: https://github.com/onivim/oni2/issues/3811#issuecomment-9103...

It's MIT licensed now, so anyone could pick it up and continue work on it, but the original authors have basically stopped working on it. This GitHub issue was the last major news update.

I never tried CoffeeScript since nobody pays me for it, though I am curious about ReasonML as an alternative, there's a Neovim front-end[0] coded in Reason that compiles natively[1], and supports existing VS Code plugins from the VSCodium plugin repository[2] which I still have yet to look at how the heck they pulled that bit off, but it is pretty interesting.

[0]: https://github.com/onivim/oni2#introduction

[1]: https://github.com/revery-ui/revery

[2]: https://open-vsx.org/