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Congratulations on the release! I have a couple questions for you (and any other contributors!) about the project, but I don't know how to phrase them without coming off as combative. Please accept the following as genuine curiosity rather than malice.

1) You called the 0.8 release "huge" in the release notes, even though it adds 11 new functions, removes 2, and updates 2 compared to 0.7, released a year prior. Is there something else about 0.8 that makes it larger than the sum of the API changes?

2) BuckleScript has seemingly been a one-man show for ~3 years. It is lagging noticeably behind the progress of the main OCaml project (including jsoo). ReasonML has a couple prominent contributors, but the overall (public) activity is dwarfed by Hongbo Zhang's work on BS. Is this because the ReasonML project is considered to be in a stable state, sufficient for production work?

2 comments

I'm not OP but I work on ReasonReact. I think these are excellent questions - thanks for asking despite your worries about tone.

1. I would not classify this release as huge by most definitions, but I do think it is by a couple. First - it has many more contributors (both in code and on issues) than the 0.7 release and that means better reflection of community desires and direction. Second - it is the first release that forces 7.x BuckleScript which sets up ReasonReact for optimizations that would be impossible otherwise. Better support for `lazy`, `context`, and more.

2. BuckleScript is a true fork of OCaml and that comes with tradeoffs. On the plus you get JS interop you cannot achieve with JSOO (records and modules compiling to objects, https://bucklescript.github.io/blog/2020/03/26/generalize-un...). On the downside, active effort must be made and prioritized to upstream and maintain course with OCaml proper.

2a. Reason is being used in production at Facebook today, but Facebook also employs many of the people working on it. I personally consider it to be in a stable state for production use, but same as any technology I think it would be foolish to adopt Reason without better understanding the reason it exists, the problems it's trying to solve, and the drawbacks it has.

1) You can see a complete list of changes here https://github.com/reasonml/reason-react/blob/a70d9e6b51ed0a... . We consider it a huge release partly because it adds some long-awaited bindings, partly because of the documentation improvements, and partly because of how community-driven the release was.

2) BuckleScript's creator works for Facebook and has both a specific focus and a long-term vision for the project, more details here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWEQjvGGiTA . He also regularly blogs about ongoing improvements: https://reasonml.org/blog . Facebook Web Messenger and other products are heavily reliant on BuckleScript. I would consider that to be production-ready.

To clarify, the link in 1) is where I took the number of changes from.

And Re: 2) I have no doubt that Mr. Zhang knows what he's doing. I was just noting how even after the prodigious amount of work he has put into BS over the years, it is still falling behind JSOO which has the benefit of being more tightly bound to the parent OCaml project. I know about the different tradeoffs JSOO and BS have made. All I meant to say is that one super-productive person is apparently (and understandably) not able to keep up with upstream (i.e. Inria + Jane Street + many others) in this case. And then we have the ReasonML project that has seen even less activity recently. If ReasonML in its current state is considered a finished product that requires minimal maintenance, I couldn't think of a better endorsement, to be honest.

Hi, the author of BuckleScript here. JSOO and BuckleScript has very different goals, the former focuses on the compatibility with native, while the latter focuses on the interop and optimal perf on JS backend. The progress of BuckleScript is actually much faster this year if you follow the development closely. OCaml as a language which has been developed for more than 20 years is quite usable without using the latest version, our top priority is to make js interop the best, it is not to catch up the lastest release (but we do have plans to sync up once every two years).

Please, you're driving me crazy. I have referred to you personally by name in two of my above comments. I know who you are! I also know about JSOO vs BS! I know! And it's super disorienting when every single prominent person from the Reason/BuckleScript ecosystem arrives in this thread just to reply directly to my comments with a canned message that has little to do with my original points.

Yes, OCaml is older! Yes, OCaml circa 2015 is a useful language! But also, yes, OCaml has gained multiple useful features since 2015! In part because its development is driver by many, many people. And no, BuckleScript doesn't have some of those features as of May 2020! And it's not an indictment of Reason, but it is also a true statement that Reason/BS are lagging behind compared to what OCaml has to offer!

I'm an outsider but it appears to me that he's addressing your points. You are specifically comparing JSOO to BS and seem to be asking how can BS keep up? You got a response that they are two projects with two different goals, and hence they can't really be compared in the way you are comparing them.

I'm not sure what's driving you crazy about this interaction.

You have half of the picture, I don't believe you have the other half, which is the progress that BuckleScript is actually making in emitting clean, readable JavaScript.

Fortunately, it's rather simple to see for yourself, you just need to head over to https://reasonml.github.io/en/try.html and try out some OCaml/Reason code and see what is emitted. In fact, the playground comes with various examples built-in, if you need some sample code to try out quickly.

ReasonML is an umbrella project/sponsor for many subprojects, all of which have the goal of bringing fully type safe, fast compiling, fast executing code to the widest number of developers and today that means JavaScript developers. Many ReasonML projects support or improve upstream OCaml ecosystem. For example, package management workflows (https://esy.sh), interactive repls that work with Reason syntax, and OCaml syntax (see https://sketch.sh), and many community members contribute to the developer tools (next generation language server created by OCamlLabs). Others are building CI infrastructure, and many other projects. Reason Syntax was the first entry into the ecosystem. It's not done evolving/improving, and it's just the tip of the iceberg for all the projects under the umbrella. BuckleScript has been developed with Reason users in mind. Syntax is one of the most important things when introducing a language, and one of the biggest tripping points for new people trying out OCaml so it makes sense that it would be the first entry. But it's not the last, it's not the only, and it's not finished evolving/improving.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, Jordan, but none of what you posted is relevant to my concerns from the above two comments.

I believe it does address part of your comments. At the very least:

"And then we have the ReasonML project that has seen even less activity recently"

You comment seemed to be based on the assumption that the Reason syntax is the sum total of the Reason project, and I provided examples that would adjust that frame of reference. See the high level goal I mentioned - bring fast development, fast running, fully type safe programming to the largest audience possible. Syntax is one important piece, but not everything, and it's not everything under the ReasonML project umbrella.

Ah, you're right. I did judge the Reason project by the number of commits its main repo has seen in the past year.

But surely you'll agree that "fast development, fast running, fully type safe programming" has been achieved years ago, and any incremental improvements coming from the BS project are just that - incremental.

You forgot the most important part: "to the largest audience possible". I think that's the biggest disconnect here.

There must be a misunderstanding here, maybe on my side, but I honestly can't see how BuckleScript is 'falling behind': it jumped from 4.02.3 to 4.06 fairly recently, with more upgrades planned, and there is ongoing work to make it emit JS that looks more and more hand-written. Its download count looks like hockey-stick growth: https://www.npmtrends.com/bs-platform

Look, JSOO is great but it has a very different goal from BuckleScript: letting OCamlers use the Opam ecosystem to make frontend apps without caring about bundle size. And that's great, but it's not what JavaScript developers want.

I think you know what I mean. 4.02.3 was released in 2015. 4.06 was released in 2017.

Like I said, I know the tradeoffs between JSOO and Reason. And lack of features from the past 2~3 years of OCaml development is one of them.

Yes, if your only heuristic of 'falling behind' is 'not getting the latest OCaml features'. It turns out that even OCaml from a few years ago is perfectly usable to build an excellent JavaScript-focused compiler.

@dmit, we will have to agree to disagree there; the reality is, only a very few people are using the absolute latest OCaml features. If you look at the Opam package build matrix: http://check.ocamllabs.io/ ... most Opam packages are building against 4.02 to 4.05. And OCaml in 2020 is great but it's still not close to what we need for wider adoption in its chosen native compilation space. BuckleScript/Reason is a different strategy, which actually does seem to be working for that goal.

I think "getting OCaml features at a slower rate than OCaml itself does" counts as "falling behind", yes.

2015 OCaml was an excellent language. 2020 OCaml is exquisite.

What feature of 2020 OCaml do you think would convince JS developers to use Reason?